Magatsu no Yaiba
by krrFiner
Summary: His name was Saburo. An outcast with no family, who lived by hunting and gathering for himself. A person living quietly in the woods and who wished for nothing more than peace for the rest of his years, till the appearance of a strange young woman outside his home showed him there was more to his life than he had given up. [Spoilers. Please check my profile for notes.]
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Serenity in the Snow

As winter encroached upon the season of autumn in a remote countryside location in Japan, so did the time of gathering firewood to last the following months; the birds had yet to migrate, though many have, but those that remained, still, offered encores to anyone around to listen—and their chirps found their resting place on the ears of a lonely villager by the mountainside, chopping and gathering the supplies he could make use of later on in the following dark days and nights. Sinking his hatchet into the bark of a nearby tree, the middle-aged man prepared to bring back the spoils of his labor.

Saburo hefted the firewood he had chopped onto his back using the basket he tied around his chest, and carried a few more pieces under each of his arms before making his way back to his house. His feet, covered in boots, sank a few centimeters deep into the earth with each step he took, the snow giving in to his weight. The wood made clacking noises every time he moved his somewhat aging body, and the wintry chill of the wind carried more bite to his face than last year's had.

Two years and a half had passed since Tanjiro Kamado's departure from his home higher up in the mountains, around whose foothills Saburo's own home was located, and by that point in time the people of the village had stopped talking about that family; if at all, it was likely to be in thoughtless mentions and nothing more. That morning after he had extended his hospitality to the eldest son of the Kamados during his returning journey from his routine trip to the village, rumors began passing around that their family had been slaughtered by a wild animal; the people with cloaked faces had cleaned up their estate alongside the bodies quickly, yet even that did not go unnoticed by the villagers, which led to even more rumors about it having been a political assassination., but Saburo had had a difficult time trying to understand the logic behind that. They were, after all, mere villagers.

When none of the Kamados showed their faces to the village for the next few days, worried whispers were heard among them, being dismissed relatively thoughtlessly as an illness within the close family, but when a full week had gone without any appearances from them, attempts to scale the mountain to pay them a visit with gifts were turned away by none other than Saburo himself. The villagers may have meant well, and were skeptical of off-handed mentions of _demons_, but Saburo's mind had been racing during those following days.

He believed in them—the monsters of the night; he had caught a glimpse of such a creature the night his family was devoured when he returned home. It had stared back at him with bright red eyes that should not have been visible in the darkness, but were, with too much uncanny intelligence to be waved off as being those of a feral animal's. Yet its form, crouched and bent in _wrong_ ways, were another cause for the petrifying aura it had emanated, and Saburo would not have been able to remember the detailed manners of injuries inflicted on the remains of his family members' corpses due to the trauma left upon his person if not for the bone-chilling smile it gave him before disappearing into the woods.

He never once slept well again after that night, and never left his home past eight in the evening. It was probably the reason why he had been so worked up over the incident upon the Kamados. Questions ran through his mind every minute of the weeks following—was it a demon? Was it the same one? How many lived on this mountain alone? When exactly did it attack? Where was Tanjiro now? Was he devoured as well? …had he been right in keeping him back that night? To give him what he saw as hospitality to the eldest son of his only friends?

Days where he would lose himself to retrospective thoughts such as those came and went, long after the village had settled down over the disappearance of a family, and it had gradually become something of a coping mechanism for the aging Saburo, who had neither family after their mysterious slaughter, nor friends after he pushed them away out of the subsequent grief he experienced. It had only been a matter of time till he grew more and more distant from the rest of the village; even before he married, he was already known for being something of a loner. Long walks in the snow and in the woods during which he would lose his mind to rage, confusion, denial, and fantasies were not rare—he had only had to take care not to be too close to the village whenever he let out the uncommon lung-stressing scream, and it was one such walk that he just realized he was on right then.

Not for very long, he would arrive at his home. In anticipation of his arrival, he began to conclude his internal thoughts with the idea that young Tanjiro had become one of the great spirit hunters after his disappearance—but that was neither here nor there; it was a mere musing he came up with at some point or another—another fanciful idea he dreamt up, one similar to his family being in heaven, rather than at peace in the afterlife, and waiting for him. …Perhaps it was because he was so lost in thought on his trek back home, and because his mind was laden with the idea of demons, but he reacted rather poorly to catching a glimpse of an unfamiliar sight that was not an animal nor an object half-buried in the snow, by the roots of a nearby tree.

The moment it came to view and peeked into his periphery, his shoulder blade involuntarily twitched, letting some of the firewood tucked under his left arm drop onto the ground, and almost releasing the ones on his right. He let out several hard gasps he tried to mend into being more shallow and relaxed, but only began perspiring before he could succeed. He crouched low, cautiously, keeping an eye on the unidentified thing while trying to appraise its identity as he picked up the fallen wood with his hands. It appeared oddly to him, before he made out what he was looking at, and why it took so long for him to figure out. Under a sparse canopy with barely enough leaves to cast a shade was a young woman, of foreign hair and skin.

What he saw was her head, angled downward into the earth from what he imagined was a fetal position from the fact that he could see her shoulders, and depending on how long she had been there, she may well have been long dead. He hurried into his home, frantically tossing down the firewood onto the floor without much organization and dropping the load on his back unceremoniously together with them before rushing back outside with a large towel in his hands. More questions ran through his mind as he tried to decipher her sudden appearance in the woods—and among them was one that made him hesitate about taking her in and nursing her back to health.

It was one concerning her _humanity_.

The cacophony of noises rumbling in his mind settled into a serene quiet as they found their place in his head, thoughts and ideas crawling to the back of his conscience as he drew near. He was mere steps away when he slowed down his pace to take in the situation before him, and the trepidation and apprehension about demons had all but disappeared the moment he made contact with her—she was still alive, as indicated by the steady rise and fall of her middle; yet something about how in-place she seemed almost made him have second thoughts. The moment he caught sight of a puff of exhalation by her chin, however, was when he resolved to bring her into his home—it could not have been that demons would have warm breath in their lungs, after all. To Saburo, that trait belonged to humans and animals alone.

Bare-skinned and unclothed, he could only imagine how it must feel to be sleeping with snow as her only blanket, that he shuddered himself. Moving closer in preparation of wrapping the towel around her, he studied the details about the enigmatic individual in the nude. She was an adolescent, closer to being an adult than a child. He couldn't see her face; a sinister-looking alabaster mask that resembled a human skull with sneering eye sockets covered her profile. Her skin was as dark as coal, and her hair a deep shade of purple—like a terrible bruise—and was short for a woman, but long for a man. Her tousled locks framed her face and stuck to it with what seemed to be her own sweat, in spite of the cold.

However, what truly made her person bizarre was what she clutched at the center of the ball she formed—in the grip of tight fingers was a sword unlike any he had ever seen before: An _ōdachi_, spanning over half of what her height would be should she be standing up, or perhaps even longer, was wrapped in black bandages around its hilt and sparsely so along the length of its blade. Their edges were frayed as though burnt and stuck to her fingers like poisoned cloth. There was an uncanny "rust", like wisps of black smoke, on the metal of the blade where it was visible, peeking through where the bandages fell away.

He recalled something from a past long gone, then—something someone told him. The great spirit hunters all wielded blades to slay the demons with—they told him that if their sword went through their necks and took them off, the demon would perish the way they would under sunlight…

Perhaps…if this person was in fact a wounded demon slayer, then he could learn more about those vile beings—

There was a sudden, quick, and subtle snap of hope that fluttered away as soon as it came, and he was left with the still quiet of the woods. As though the nature around him beckoned him to proceed, a gentle blanket of wind drew back against the sounds of life perched upon the branches high above—both of leaves and of avians—and Saburo was left to provide her shelter, letting the cold take away any sentiments of his house being a death trap for those that entered. For the long-gone family he missed dearly, and for young Tanjiro who disappeared shortly after accepting his hospitality, this individual, he hoped, could somehow bring peace to his heart by proving a different outcome; a different future…

"I will not hurt you," Saburo whispered in her direction as he covered her, just in case she was cognizant. After learning that she would not let go of the armament after several attempts with his hand on the bandages of the blade, he lifted her—how unnaturally light she was—and remembered having carried children as light as she. Her arms swayed where they were suspended from her limp form, bringing the sword swinging with their motion.

He found it difficult to balance himself, taking a few moments to regain his footing; though she was light, the space she occupied in his arms was another matter entirely. Steeling himself to focus on his current task, however, he dismissed the matter of her weight as being unimportant toward his objective, moving on to look for a place to settle her, wary of the sword the whole time. His breathing grew ragged, but not because of his struggle—its source was his anticipative excitement; something he had not felt in a long time. If this person truly was a demon slayer, he could get answers.

Answers to questions about a world he knew existed out there, yet could not confirm, could not make sense of—it was something completely intangible to the likes of him, a humble pseudo-hermit who could not let go of his past, and was powerless to move on from it. It could be the end to his sleepless nights…or perhaps even the beginning of more. He mentally gathered himself—and that was the end of that, for then.

Laying her down in a futon after contemplating it, he drew a blanket over her and turned away to heat up a kettle filled with water using the firewood he had collected. Though Saburo had looked for injuries, there were none to be found, but physical damage might not be an affliction of high priority, if the fever was of any indication to him. It would be intuitive to contact a medical practitioner from town for her ailment, but given how awkwardly long it had been since his last visit there, some changes were bound to have occurred; he would have to reintegrate into their community to begin with… Ever since he began living the life of a faux-hermit, he had been hesitant to truly reintegrate himself to the life of the common folk, his only connection having been the Kamados, but even they were gone, then.

He stood back up, the house beginning to warm while he sat. There was a silence that followed—one that he became familiar with—and he couldn't help but allow his mind to wander a little. He began to remember the time he would spend with his family in there, and as he reminisced certain spots in his house, his eyes came to land on the towel he had used to cover the young woman, collapsed in a pile by the side of the small cabin. He furrowed his brow upon its sight; it might be a mere trick of the light in the dim room, but there appeared to be dark splotches on the sheet… He moved to investigate, and noticed a few shallow holes slowly burning through the fabric, their rims stained with a color he could not quite make out; a sinister observation.

His first instinct was to doubt the foreigner, but that felt somewhat uncalled for, considering that it was of his own volition that the following events had transpired. He sensed a miasma aloft in the air, and it suddenly became somewhat difficult to breathe properly. Yet things kept pointing in that direction he first looked in; if his initial suspicion had not been enough, then the fact that a literal _miasma_ pouring out from the blade itself and filling the room left no doubt spared. They billowed from the _ōdachi_, like smoke, coiling upward and pushing against the ceiling as though it was an evil spirit trying to escape the confines of his house.

He blinked twice to ascertain that he was indeed watching the phenomenon occur, yet only found that the darkness in his room had grown more intense. There were no signs of smoke. He took a deep breath of air to relieve his petrified lungs, but it did not register to him that what he sucked in did not quite allow his organs to relax just yet. Already, feelings of apprehension began to settle in once more, and he felt perspire dribble down one side of his face. Standing to his full height, he made to approach her. An inexplicably frightening aura emanated from the blade… He tried to understand what he was being confronted with, but all his experience in life could not offer him a satisfactory answer that did not disparage his mental condition.

A quietly aggressive sizzling noise broke him out of his thoughts, and he realized, from the periphery of his vision, that the towel he used earlier was beginning to corrode—no—to _melt_, as though it had been dipped in extremely powerful acid and was only then starting to dissolve. Saburo swallowed, gulping back a lump in his throat that had formed without his knowledge. Before he could do anything else, however, there was a rustling from her end.

As the enigma began to stir from her "slumber", the mask concealing her face slipped to the floor, and whatever darkness had consumed the atmosphere of the home was dispelled.

[]

_Hot, hot; it felt like she was going to melt. Under normal circumstances her skin would be burning off, but as it was then, it only served to internalize the heat. She felt as though her mind could be consumed by the clammy warmth, her body's tightening in response to it suffocating itself. She couldn't breathe; and her heart was going to burst…_

_She stumbled around in the abyss around her, footsteps light, taking careless strides. Her legs wobbled, yet she couldn't help but allow them to; at one point she felt like the path she walked was free, but when she took the liberty of moving however she wanted, she tripped countless times and fell through invisible pits—it was all black to her. She could see nothing…_

_Then she came upon a meadow. It was atop a hill elevated upon an endless plain of flowers. She sat among the lilies, and plucked out a few of them to admire. Blue lilies, blue roses, blue chrysanthemums, and many others she couldn't name dotted the landscape in a wondrous display under the starry sky she found herself under. Then, one by one, the stars went out, and they rained from the sky across the earth as far as she could see. The further her eyes looked, the more the blue blended in with each other, swirling into the same pit of blinding blue which slowly descended into the color of poison._

_From there came storm clouds—they swirled in the sky and swallowed the falling stars, growing even larger with their consumption. Purple smoke descended from them, and she rose from her seat, and came to see that the flower in her fingers had wilted, having been engulfed in that smog, its petals drifting off into the purple all around her that had darkened into black._

_The ground beneath her gave away, and though she tried to flee, her limbs felt frozen in place and once more she fell through another abyss—that was when her body grew frigid. Upon bones did she fall, then, and she scattered them, tossing them aside, fear gripping her heart as she came face-to-face with empty skulls one after another… Their eyes—empty as the abyss they were in—held a shallow depth in their sneer—their squint, as though they had found their next target. She ran, stepping on skulls, cracking some under her soles, and finally collapsed when enough splinters of bone had pierced the arches of her feet._

_Her chest expanded and contracted rapidly with trepidation, vision darkening, and raising her head, she perceived the faint outline of a lone skull in the void. She moved to hold it between her hands, not because she wanted to, but because she felt the urge to. She fought back against it, not wanting to touch it, yet her body moved against her accord, as though she was being commanded by a will that overpowered her own._

_It had horns extending from its temples. They pointed toward the heavens, curving inward to each other at a sharp angle, with turned edges at their points. Upon its forehead was the tainted image of crossing blades, smeared in purple, and its sockets were wide open. There were creases between its brow ridges embedded into its expression, and it looked more alive than dead; even merely looking at it felt too much for her…but that was where its distinctions ended—like all the others, it was missing its lower jaw._

_But that did not stop it from speaking to her—from the darkness beyond her comprehension came a deafening sound that shredded her senses as much as it spoke through them. She could not make the words out, for she was paralyzed with fear, as was her mind had been—for that time, she was naught but a faceless, human-shaped void for the will to convey its message._

_Through the tremors of scrambling noises she stared into its sockets, which did not sneer—she looked ahead into them, and for the duration of her role as its audience she felt unlike herself, as though she was a different entity altogether, with herself keeping down the only sense of familiarity it had to her identity. They were widely gaping, empty, clenched and judging—till there came a spark of fire within them; a blue flame. Before she could let go—she could not let go—they flared up, becoming more powerful and ever-bright. It grew in intensity and lit up the darkness all around her, burning it all from black to the color of light._

_She didn't realize when she began screaming as the conflagration consumed her body and soul, when she felt a blade piercing her stomach and coming out the other side. It kept sinking into her, and showed no sign of stopping—she dared not move, however, and her mind continued registering the unending motion of the blade sliding through the folds of her flesh, warm liquid squelching out within the gap formed; blood dripped onto her toes and ignited—they did nothing but tremble in place, growing cold within the fire, and she realized that it was not the blaze that burnt, but rather her senses as her body crumbled from the bottom._

_Yet what truly burned her to the core was not the fire, but the gaze behind it._

Hot, hot; it felt like she was going to melt. Her skin was burning off, incapable of internalizing the heat; her mind was disappearing into the raging flare, her body disintegrating in response to the burning. She breathed in, and her heart exploded—and she had become nothing more than dust in the void…

[]

…was what it had felt like. It took several moments for her eyes to readjust. Everything was blurry, and for a while her ears provided her with a ringing she wanted to get rid of. Useless, audial information her brain could not decipher flooded her head, and her sense of touch was no better. She felt burnt out for some reason, skin crawling with cold knots where her hairs stood.

Her droopy, glazed eyes suddenly shot up, and her senses all returned to her spontaneously. In the rush, she tossed aside any covers that hindered her; the jointed overhaul and forced reconfiguration of her senses caused her to vomit clear liquids onto the wooden floorboards of the house she found herself in.

Her anatomy's thermoregulatory systems were out of flux with her mind and body's concurrence; the heat within her dreams and the naked exposure to the snow was too much a combination for her to tolerate all at once. She couldn't help her wobbling arms as they held her off of the floor, and quietly stayed in that position, trying to regain a semblance of control over her own figure.

For the next minute or so, all she could hear was her own labored breathing, and all she could feel was the straining of her weakened arm muscles in their try to support her inadequate weight and the runnels of sweat dribbling down her back and front. Her vision went on and off constantly, and she was left to shut her eyes to prevent the further encroachment of nausea from taking over. Her fingers felt strangely restricted as well; she tried experimenting with one of her hands—she could not tell which—and faced an inexplicable powerlessness over the manipulation of it.

It was the binding around it that prevented free movement over that fist of hers, which in turn was connected to something even heavier than her entire arm—she could feel it touching her foot behind her; it was a paraphernalia that only served to weigh her down at this stage, but even then she could not help but be wary of the object—not because it proved to be a barrier between her and bodily liberty, but because of something she could not risk delving into at the moment, lest she throw up again—

—why was her head lower than before? At that point, her forehead touched the wood, and the unsteady sway of her body rubbed it against the floor. The hair framing her face strayed forward to the pull of gravity, and she felt their tips touching the slime she had regurgitated, the strands on the left side of her face brushing against something hard. She had given up, resigning her nose to suffer the same fate to the enlarged pool of oral refuse. She could not even feel sorry for herself, or pathetic. It was, at this point, her natural state of being: what even _was_ she?

She suddenly felt hands on her sides—she was too weak to react to them—and they lifted her up and put her back down onto something soft—the same something that one of her legs had been grinding down on. There came another soft, yet firm, thing being put below her head, just above her nape, and never before had she felt as secure… There came unintelligible words being spoken to her—something she knew was being directed at her, but could not understand—from the person helping her into position, and she drifted off to a peaceful sleep somewhere amidst her failed endeavors to extend her gratitude towards him…

[]

Saburo looked on in stifled bewilderment. Looking at her face, the young woman could not possibly be older than twenty. She had eyes filled with innocent wonder, as disoriented they may be, and features that complemented the idea of a peaceful life on the outskirts of a small town, based on his experience meeting with the family of the Kamados—yet she made him feel a way that only dangerous people had ever done. He had been suspicious of her ever since the odd and peculiar occurrences transpiring in the house came to his notice, but at the same time he felt as though he had to curb such sentiments due to him being the one to have brought her in himself.

For a brief second her saw her eyes scanning the room in quick disorder, and that alone had endeared him to her—like a newborn, looking around the room they came into the world through, and experiencing the first spark of _thought_ that their being knew. And, of course, like newborns, came an involuntary reaction from the body—she vomited.

Saburo wondered if it was something that newborns would do: to support themselves with developed limbs and try to prevent themselves from creating their mess, if they could. He bit his lip, wondering if this was…_all right_. If it was okay for him to see his children in this person, though delusional he might have been—he knew that, that he was delusional in some capacity or another. He was probably delusional when he saw the towel melt, or when her skin and hair grew a bit more like a human's when she threw up, and the other villagers had told him that, either directly or passively. Avoiding the village had not originally been his own plan he followed of his own volition.

After the deaths of his family members, the townspeople began to suspect him of having committed the act—but he flew into a fit of rage; what kind of father would murder his own children? How could they see him that way? But that had only fueled their preconceptions of the entire occurrence—Saburo, the loner who no one was truly close with, who refused to associate himself with people in general more than he needed to, who chose to live in the outskirts of town of his own volition alone for most of his life, when in reality he had merely been a more awkward person than most, who only grew less wary as he matured into an adult—but by then, he already had almost nobody he could trust.

The Kamados were the exception. They were a warm family, despite living higher up in the cold mountain than he. He had witnessed and helped with the birth of their youngest children, and they had come to grow up considering him as an uncle of sorts during the uncommon visits throughout the year. He had been invited for dinner by Tanjuro at several occasions, and had had supplies shared with him by Kie whenever the seasons changed and food ran low, and in return had offered Tanjiro a place to stay whenever it got too dark during his trip home after he took on the duty of selling charcoal to the village following Tanjuro's passing.

Till now, the deaths of the Kamados still felt unreal to him. When his family disappeared, he mourned and grieved intensely for months, till it subsided into a more bearable second nature for the following years, and when Tanjuro passed, he wept. Yet when the entire Kamado family was swept away, he could no longer feel much else for either them or himself, leaving aside the occasional days where he actually _felt_ anything enough to spend on tears.

So…he was desperate. For what, he could not admit, nor could he answer it himself. He knew what the answer was, but it was not something to be said. It was something to acknowledge and witness the transpiring events of, and they would begin there—with the visitor in the snow.

[]

"So, the remaining demons in the southern provinces have been eliminated, you say? And that minimal damage was made in the process, with one person injured? Well, what are you waiting for, hurry and send some Kakushi from the Butterfly Estate to the site! Make sure they bring the necessary tools to perform the medication, and bring some incense as well to alleviate the worries of their family! We don't want the foreign ambassadors to shake their head at Japan, do we?

"What was that? A Demon Slayer went missing around the foothills of Mount Ooe? A _tsuguko_, no less? This is why I said not to send in individual units! Demon Slayers will be sent there. Tell them to make sure to not involve any government officials in the area—I know they've been upping their activity across Japan, which was why I wanted that operation to have been a complete success! Now grab the _hashira_ responsible for them and deploy a squad immediately! And tell them that they have an audition with me after they return!

"The Kasugai crows stationed at headquarters aren't feeling well? With winter coming, that should only be expected. Who was in charge of their health these past years? Muzan's attack may have caused a large amount of damage to be sustained by this place, and that included the aviary, but that is no excuse to delay renovations, even if personnel is spread across operations scarcely. Call up the carpenters who live close by. We will pay them with the money from the wages intended for the Demon Slayers with no dependants who were deceased as of the last battle."

Officers milled about in an orderly fashion, back and forth, upon a ruined mountaintop garden. They were lined up in a single file, each individual waiting in line holding an important report to hand over to their current acting leader. Kagaya Ubuyashiki, the previous head of the Demon Slayer Corps, met his demise early on in the battle against Muzan that took place a few months earlier. With his decession, his responsibility fell upon his only son of eight ripe years, Kiriya Ubuyashiki. It had proven to be too much for him to bear, as many reparations and amendments were to be made following the catastrophe that occurred.

As proven by his subsequent fever, the position of the leader was far too much for him to handle. That was when their current acting leader was appointed. A foreigner, with bright blond hair and piercing red eyes—the initial impression he might give was that of a cruel, merciless tyrant, but the wisdom he demonstrated all but dispelled that notion, and he had proven himself the most worthwhile asset to the organization of the Corps that they had come across in a long time.

King Gilgamesh, as he had commanded for himself to be addressed as, had been overseeing the processes within and without the Demon Slayer Corps for several months, then, and despite all the busy work that met him, he showed no signs of slowing down. If it had been any other person who displayed such haughty pride, nobody would have been so compliant—but the skills at management that he displayed had so consistently bore stellar results that he had earned everybody's respect under the span of a week—and they called him as he had asked with no qualms. While he was not as soft-spoken and kind as their previous leader, King Gilgamesh was a man who appeared to treat his new position with light consideration, yet still excels at it greatly.

Beside him sat Kiriya Ubuyashiki himself, who diligently took notes and directions from the wise ruler, working hard to improve himself and to learn from the "King".

Hours passed like that, and eventually came a Demon Slayer who wore _hanafuda_ earrings. Although he had made himself meek and presented himself humbly to King Gilgamesh, the man raised a hand that signaled for him to stand proudly before him. "Tanjiro Kamado!" His voice, loud and clear and charismatic, carried with it an air of pride as he said his name. For the first time in the entire day, he bore a wide smile on his face. "Esteemed Demon Slayer who played an instrumental role in the final battle against Kibutsuji Muzan, raise your head! You have earned your audition with me."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Saburo

His name was Saburo. An outcast with no family, who lived by hunting and gathering for himself—a self-sufficient man who bothered no one in his daily life, and whom no one bothered in their daily lives. A person living quietly in the woods and who wished for nothing more than peace for the rest of his years. That was who he was, to her; that was his introduction to her.

Days had passed after their first meeting; following them, he helped her do just about anything and everything, having had to haul her to different locations when needed, such as when he visited the town to find clothes for her, and then when he took her to see the village doctor. Nursing her back to health took a sizable portion of his time every day succeeding the initial visit, and for the first time in years, Saburo experienced once more the life of the common man.

Those days turned to weeks, the first of which she had been a no-name guest who lived in his house who had been too weak to do almost anything by herself, and too disoriented to even speak, but when Saburo realized that it might be a linguistic barrier that her silence had been indicating her attempts to overcome, he took it upon himself to take her through the basics of Japanese, setting aside intermediate and fluent Japanese for another time.

Once all of that initialization had been completed, the time they spent together turned to months—for the first couple she had been a no-name stranger who lived in his house and helped with menial duties accommodating them both, but eventually there came a time when she was able to speak her name to him. To Saburo, that was good enough.

Over time, as she regained her health, and grew stronger, and more intelligible, he came to teach her how to hunt, and how to gather. He taught her language, customs, trivia to get by every day within the house, and tips on how to perform the most basic chores—he taught her almost everything there was to know of the land, including the history of the town, and then the country itself—something that struck him as a bit odd as a requirement, but dismissible—and eventually, before he realized it, she had become a part of his life.

Gradually, she spoke to him more and more clearly, and conversation flowed naturally between the both of them, but there were times when she kept to herself; those were whenever he inquired about _her_. Those questions had come late, as he did not even realize that there were things he himself had to learn of till later on: Questions of who she was were met with a blank-faced silence, as though she herself was oblivious. Questions of where she came from were corresponded to with a thoughtful look, and then an apologetic shake of her head. Questions of when she arrived were answered with thoughtful quiet and an "I do not know."

Questions about the sword that had been tied to her hands were retracted after he sensed her pensive, bothered unease—not solely because he did not want to pry, but because he found her insecurity and apprehension regarding that topic contagious.

Ever since finding her, the feeling of having a presence with him came to become something of an awkward thing for him to get used to again. Her gaze often made him uncomfortable whenever he felt her eyes watching his back, and the interactions with her had proven to be difficult for even himself to carry out. She was someone whom he had never met before, and was a foreigner, no less. The looks they received from the townspeople the first time he ventured into town with someone else in tow back when she first came were too much for him; not only did her black hair and brown skin stand out, the very fact that Saburo of all people was accompanied by someone they never saw before came across as a bit too difficult to accept under the circumstances.

That was to say, normal circumstances. As much as he would like to think otherwise, Saburo was a pariah; and he had no one to blame but himself.

[]

"Hassan."

"Yes."

"Hang up the towels. I have gathered them by the door."

"Yes, Master Saburo."

During the time when Saburo taught her the basics of the language, he came to the point where they discussed honorifics. They varied by familiarity, and by authority. He had not been one to tell people how to address him; it was of little consequence to him. Rather, he enjoyed, inwardly, seeing how people perceived him through the honorific they chose for him themselves; it not only told him where he stood among them, according to their perception, but also informed him of the kind of people they were.

Hassan was an obedient person, compliant and quick to learn. Her movements, he had noticed, were very efficient—almost mechanically so—but her demeanor was all but inhuman. She was a humane individual, understanding empathy for the animals they hunted, respectful of their lives, and eager to learn whatever he had to offer each night. She was quiet—_stealthy_—and never made more noise than necessary, but intent. What she desired to accomplish was always clear to him from her mannerisms—and secretly, it was something he admired; a person so young yet capable of putting her mind to something so patiently; a trait that made Tanjiro Kamado popular among the adults, including Saburo himself.

Oftentimes she would get absorbed into her tasks, but never to the point where they drowned out her surroundings.

In other words, Hassan was competent; a source of gladness and pride for Saburo, though he wondered, with a touch of guilt he would bury quickly, if he could claim such a person as similar to being his own progeny….

Outside, he heard the sound of clips being used to hang the towels as he had requested, and the tautness of the line coming into effect by providing a short bounce where it stretched after the weight of sheets were added below them. He was just finalizing the rearrangement of the tools in the house when Hassan returned, standing by the doorframe, putting away her boots.

"I have returned."

"Yes." Saburo, not looking at her, allowed a small, serene smile to grace his features. "Thank you," he added shortly after.

They were thinking the same thing right then. They had cleared the day's tasks quite early, and there was nothing left to do, except, likely, her studies. As she moved to grab her book she used for taking notes, Saburo held up a hand. "Hassan, I have been quite tired as of late. I'm afraid that I will not be able to tutor you today."

Hassan blinked, and nodded her head. "Yes, Master Saburo." Lately, Saburo had been venturing outside the house later than eight more and more often, and she believed that it had probably tired him out, gradually. She wondered what it was that he had been doing outside so late, against his own rules.

There was a silence from her as he made to move towards his sandals, but, as she began to think that he was going to go out for his usual evening strolls into the woods starting from an earlier time, he suddenly stopped. "…I will make some tea for myself," he said a bit after the pause. "Would you like some as well?"

Hassan pondered it a little, before shaking her head, muttering her gratitude toward his offer.

"Very well. You are free to do as you please for the rest of the day, but return by eight."

[]

In winter, the sun set much earlier than in the other seasons—that was something even a child could make note of, but Saburo was not a child. He was a man aging into his later years, and as someone in his position, his world had come to expand far beyond the rising and the setting of the sun, or merely the seasons' habits around Japan; namely, he knew the habits of the birds as they migrated from their country for somewhere with a warmer climate, and their gradual departure over the course of the beginning months of winter.

That was the third month, then. December. The birds had long departed, though a few weaker, older ones still remained behind, letting out their final chirps before the cold would come to claim them, high up in their nests.

Yet the flight of avians were not of concern to him. It was the hour at which demons would begin to prowl at night. 8PM. At least, if it was of any indication at all, the demon _he_ knew would only come out at 8PM, no matter the season, and no matter when the sun set. In the past, from within his humble wooden cabin, he could feel its evil presence outside past eight; whether it circled his home, or climbed the trees surrounding it, he would not know…but he could hear its voice on some nights every single year, beckoning him to come out and join his family.

Delusions were what he would now wave them off as. Ever since Hassan came into his life, those fears grew weaker. They definitely must have been mere delusions. After all, with the weakening of his obsessions over the great spirit hunters, and of his ritual of visiting _that tree_ every evening, came the peace that his mind had come to embrace from Hassan's company. He had stopped hearing those noises haunting his abode, with her company every night then. That was when he began taking the risk to leave his doorstep—to pay his final respects and to leave his personal demons for death by the end of that winter, even though something always compelled him to leave earlier than he would like to.

The tea was warm in both his hands and his throat. He blew gently into his small cup, and the steam and aroma that wafted off the surface of the liquid returned to him a homely breath that warmed his face, juxtaposing the warmth of his house to the frigid winds that blew outside. Hassan never disobeyed him—not even accidentally, so Saburo was not worried that she would come home late against his rule. He took another sip of his tea, and, without realizing it, drifted off into a peaceful nap in his position.

[]

The soles of her sandals scrunched the snow beneath them. It was intended to be a light walk outside that she was on, which she would prefer to do in more open footwear, thus she had put away her boots in favor of her sandals. The former would not have brought snow to Saburo's doorstep, which was why she would often wear the heavier pair when on duty.

She looked around, observing the trees, and noting their features to guide her on her walk around the woods, making note of additional details on each of them with each day and listened to the chirps of the birds above, counting their numbers and comparing their sources.

She liked to explore the woods, and find new paths for herself to go around; new routes, routes that were easier to take going upward, those that were more accessible to scale going downward, the burrows of the small animals that they hunted, and the places where snow gathered least. It was a mere hobby, and not something that she would do for strategy, even though she would share her self-found knowledge with Saburo should it easen his life somewhat. There was something in exploring that kindled her spirit somewhat, despite the cold sometimes bypassing the loose kimono she wore for home.

Minutes passed, and it was a full hour before she began to grow a bit weary of her surroundings. It was the basic human condition to become anxious when one was alone, and it was merely the mind tricking the person into believing that there were eyes trained on them when there were none in order to exercise caution against unseen threats. Hassan knew that, yet something felt different this time.

It was still 4PM, based on her perception of time since she left her home, but the sun was already low, and the temperatures were rapidly growing colder—faster than they had been a few days ago. Eventually, she became too irrationally nervous to continue her trek, and decided that it was a good time to return home. Climbing over some roots, her kimono got caught on a branch and the sole of her sandal separated from her foot the moment it came into contact with a protrusion in the ground simultaneously, leading to her unable to protect herself from falling down and striking her head against a rock—and almost immediately, she blanked out in the snow.

[]

_She was in the same place again—in that darkness. The skull that had incinerated her being was nestled into the making of a dusty throne of worn stone, seeming to have been fused with it, and she prostrated herself before it. Nothing came—not the voice, and not the fire. There were no flowers, and no clouds; no stars and no masks: It was only her, and the _death_ that sat judge above her._

_There was only a silence; a constant, deafening one, and it grew to become intense enough that her mind perceived it as being a voice unto itself. As she waited for a message, her eyelids shut, and in the darkness of her blocked vision came a mesh of memories. The voice she heard months ago came to her once more in memory, and this time, she could appraise what it said._

_Th_ _t sh_ _ h_ _d gr_ _wn w_ _k. Th_ _t sh_ _ w_ _ld str_ _y _ _ff th_ _ p_ _th _ _f th_ _ H_ _ss_ _ns. Th_ _t _ _t w_ _ld c_ _me f_ _r h_ _r h_ _d wh_ _n th_ _t t_ _m_ _ c_ _m_ _. _ _nd_ _th_ _t _ _t h_ _d g_ _ft_ _d h_ _r _ _ bl_ _d_ _ t_ _ pr_ _v_ _ h_ _rs_ _lf w_ _rthy _ _f l_ _f_ _._

"_Three storms hath set their voracity toward Nippon. They wilt arrive, and their traces wilt litter this nation only when their predecessors' have gone, but lest the claws of these heretics besmirch the lives of persons and nature, the blight thou carrieth within thy body shalt burn them to cinders._

"_Should their blades not be dulled, they wilt seeketh more lives to stoke their winds, and the evening bell wilt toll the name of all nations upon this earth._

"_Hearken. Do not force the Lord in Heaven to return early."_

[]

Saburo woke to a damp feeling on his thigh. His kimono stuck to the area where it was wet, and he held but an empty cup in his hand that dangled off his fingers at a sharp angle. It looked as though he had wasted some precious tea, to his dismay. The small flame he had made had been extinguished long ago by itself, and it left the drink to become cold within the kettle. He made to stand, stretching his limbs and popping some joints. Looking around, he noted that Hassan had not been back yet, which did not surprise him—if she had been, he would not have woken up with an uncleaned tea set—and that everything, including the _ōdachi_, was in place. Outside had gone dark, as typical of winter. He arched his back and took in a deep breath, before stopping abruptly, eyes widening. The tea had been too cold for it to have been only a couple of hours since he fell into slumber.

Hurriedly, he went to look at his clock to read the time, and made for outside quickly. He looked around for Hassan—no sign of her anywhere nearby—and, with a deep breath taken, yelled out her name.

The sole word echoed into the forest, passing by the ears of the foreigner, and landing on those of the being perched on the fallen trunk above her prone form. It watched over her unconscious self with gleeful anticipation, allowing a cackle to escape its lips.

The creature turned its gaze to the bark of the tree behind Hassan, and sneered at it. Through its bared teeth, which formed an inhumanly wide smile, came a distorted voice: "T i , b r , u i l dd a o r n e t re ."

Shortly after, the young woman stirred from her slumber, but by the point that she had awoken, the creature was long gone.

[]

_Cold, cold._ What happened? Her body ached, the way one's would after waking up from sleeping in the wrong position, and her head throbbed acutely, but her pain was amplified by the fact that her clothes had been soaked through by the layers of snow she had slept on. It was merely two months ago that she had caught a fever, but it appeared that she was going to burden Saburo again with another cold, then. As she gathered herself, she thought of options to make it up to him…when, with a chill, she realized that she might have gone past the curfew he had set.

She stood upright, snow falling off of the creases in her clothing, one weak leg put forward. It shook a bit, before steadying fairly quickly, and she started to look at her surroundings to gain an idea of where she was at the time, when her eyes landed on something peculiar. On the bark of a nearby tree were odd-looking distortions. She moved closer to it to inspect it; perhaps she would be able to find a clue as to where she was based on the trees she was around. Squinting, she was able to make out the faint outline of a few characters in Japanese in the darkness, yet, despite all the tutoring, she did not understand what they were.

They appeared to be words to her, but without any surrounding context, the message, if it was one, did not get through to her, and she was left tilting her head to the side and furrowing her brows to get an idea of what it meant. Perhaps she could show them to Saburo next time, when they hunted again… For then, she only needed to make her way back home. She had never disappointed him before, and so she would hate to start.

Swaying, she ambled over the multiple hills of the mountain, carefully stepping over depressions that were concealed by the night, which came off familiarly easy to her, while trying to recall where she had gone before she fell unconscious.

_That tree was ahead of the one below the hill closer to the ridge over the one that still had some leaves remaining, and if she followed that small path, she would be led to the tree with oddly-shaped claw marks…_ As she began to follow the path that would lead to a small clearing that she had gone through on her way to that spot, she heard an eerie cry.

Perhaps it was a regular sound, but the winds that were picking up had distorted it greatly, leading to the effect of a short howl of a wolf-like creature. It certainly sounded that way to her, but when she focused on what it was…she made out her name.

_Saburo?_ He was…yelling. Her senses went deeper, still, and she felt rapid footsteps with the signature of sprinting. He was looking for her—she had to hurry and return! Leaving the clearing, that was when she felt the chilling presence of a creature behind her, but she dared not look back, feigning ignorance and rushing through the sloping hills, dotted with hard ridges and rough turns, while the snowstorm continued to intensify.

She pushed past branches, broke some off, ducking under others, and felt the cold getting to her, making her skin number and robbing her of her finer controls over them. At several points her face was assaulted with a blast of snow that she believed must have come from her drops onto beds of condensed ice, and the frigidity of the surroundings made the loudening voice of Saburo become more distorted and more similar to like that within a dream. Her breaths deafened her ears, and she sucked in too much cold air from the speed at which she ran, until finally she closed her eyes and powered through the aerial blankets of white ahead of her, the sounds of arboreal pursuit behind her making it difficult to stay calm.

Before long, she burst through a frame of frail branches and tumbled into more stable ground, several meters from none other than Saburo himself, who looked more disheveled than she had ever seen him, panting hard and bewildered at her sudden appearance, before his expression melted into a mixture of relief and…sadness.

He kicked up small heaps of snow with his sandals as he made his way towards her, locking her in a sudden hug—something that had never happened before. She was too surprised to say anything—not even to apologize—before she hesitantly, no, _movedly_ made to return the gesture…

It was her first time giving him such an embrace, and they both reveled in the silence they shared, the snowstorm around them subsiding in noise as they listened only to each other's breaths, listening to them slow down and stabilize. _He must have been worried sick for me…_, she thought guiltily. In her mind, she had been surprised at how worried he had been instead of mad. She had assumed that the curfew had been out of disciplinary protocol, but then, as footsteps behind her approached, and as Saburo perked up and began returning to his previously frantic demeanor, she realized only then that there must have been something more.

Saburo's arms around her slipped off from her back, and she felt his breaths heating up above her head. When she herself turned to look, she too became a _believer_. Then, no matter how much she would try to forge a normal life for herself, she knew it would never come to fruition, because standing before the both of them was the cause of many a loon, and was unmistakably _demonic_.

[]

" bu ," the creature…_spoke_…to them, taking steps forward. "I th g I d i cl r o n t nd r a ou pas igh ."

Hassan could not help but let her eyes go wide as she took in the form of the being approaching them. An abominable thing it was, with mangled legs, a sinewy torso, veiny arms, all of them disproportionate to each other in size, and…a completely smooth, round face. Featureless, hairless, and clean… Its eyes were rounded, but strikingly beady—that was, it struck nothing short of fear into her heart upon catching sight of it. Its beady red eyes, glowing in the white snowstorm—no, _through_ it—came closer and closer, and the movements that such a misshapen body made as it advanced were an awful thing to bear witness to.

"O ," it realized something, and that was when its face morphed into something as grotesque as the rest of its body, which had the strange effect of making it less fearsome and _foreign_, yet made its threat much more clear. It expanded its mouth, both horizontally and forward, into something that resembled a wolf's maw, while retaining an uncanny, human-like aspect. Its eyes grew even larger than it was before, and the blood vessels in them became more clear to see—something that Hassan inwardly asked to stop as they had enlarged.

"Spe ng in e hu an tong e is…something uncomf rtable for me to do wit that kind of face…," it said as its voice turned mystically from unintelligible to sounding as normally as any regular villager's, till it finally affixed them with a clearly fake look of civility. "_I hope this is better?_"

The way its mouth moved as it formed human sounds out of such a monstrous face was something of a horrific marvel, and Hassan had all but had enough of it. Yet, as Saburo remained silent, she simply was still at a loss on how to respond, many of the words it spoke being any combination of lost to the blizzard, to its vocal distortion's transition into more or less clear, and being too advanced for her at the time.

"Saburo, you don't really believe that you're truly free from me, do you? I've been watching you every single time you went to visit that tree of yours, you know? I get the message." The demon crossed its fingers together, "I know I've been more lenient on you lately, but you shouldn't think that I would let you go that easily after all these years we've spent together."

"So you knew…," Saburo spoke for the first time since meeting the demon, his voice shaky, and barely more than a whisper—while it was hard for Hassan to make out despite her proximity to him, the demon picked up on it without any indication of difficulty.

"I know all there is about you. Ever since I ate your family all those years ago," Hassan froze in her spot, her whole body stiffening, "you've been a really interesting person to watch—my only source of entertainment. Seeing you suffer so much like that was so joyful, you know?"

"…Why?" Saburo whispered to her with a raspy voice, as though his throat had dried up all at once. "It's still 7PM," Hassan's head rose slightly at that, "so why are you here already?"

"I had to lay low for a long, long while, avoiding the demon slayers they sent after me and avoiding direct contact with them," it began, "I think they just gave up on me because I hadn't killed anyone in so long, so you should know what that means." As it finished looking around, as though it had been confined, the demon's eyes turned into slits. It glared at them, malicious. "I've been very starved."

[]

_There was a great many thing that Saburo did not know about the great spirit hunters, yet craved to. During his search for knowledge, from whatever source presented itself to him, he found out one important thing about the demon slayers—that was, the fact that they carried weapons called the Nichirin Blades, said to be one of the only weapons that could banish demons into the realm of death._

_Nichirin Blades possessed few distinct features that distinguished them from regular weapons, and among them were that they varied in color, but that when they did, the length of the sword was undisturbedly of that hue. They also possessed unique, engraved characters at the base of their blade; the brand of a rare group of swordsmiths somewhere in Japan._

_The sword that Hassan had appeared to him with displayed no such characteristics; its blade's face was distorted with wisps of black that covered the sheen of metal beneath it, and there were no such words written on it. Aside from the black bandages wrapped around its hilt, it had little in the way of decoration._

_Learning that, Saburo let go of the miniscule hope he had when taking her in, instead wishing to focus on the present and what new future he could forge with the visitor._

_Yet, then, when the path leading outside the torment he could not escape appeared, he once again found there to be a hole in the darkness—and though his eyes had adjusted to it and could make it out, Hassan's had not, and she would fall in._

"I have no name, but I have one intention tonight." The demon raised one finger to represent its goal, and pointed it square at Hassan. "I will kill that woman and watch you thrash, Saburo. It's what I live for."

[]

His name was Saburo. An outcast with no family, who lived by hunting and gathering for himself—a self-sufficient man who bothered no one in his daily life, and who no one bothered in their daily lives. A person living quietly in the woods and who wished for nothing more than peace for the rest of his years. That was who he was, to her; that was his introduction to her.

But she knew there was something more to him that he had omitted telling her.

Saburo stood up, and an awkward silence just followed—before he yelled at the demon, pointing a thin finger at its face from afar. "You—You think I'm some kind of joke made for you? You think you can get away with this? I will have the demon slayers come for you. You'll regret it!" he spat with more anger and vitriol than Hassan had ever seen him expressing.

It was a lame threat he threw at her, but he could not do much to her either way. He had no power, no strength, to truly confront a demon such as it. He had stammered on his words getting his message out, but what did he just accomplish then? All it did was to cause the well of emotions within him to finally overflow, and he let out a distressed yell at nothing in particular, arms taut and fists clenched, yet swung powerlessly as trepidation number his sense of control over his own body.

He was a man just waiting for his death, pacing around in powerless nervousness. While the cold blew through his thin kimono and pierced his skin, adrenaline sealed off that thermal pain, but stress over the need to protect Hassan muddled his brain and did nothing short of beginning to short-circuit his old mind.

At that, Hassan began to rise, uncertain and apprehensive about its not attacking them. She put an arm up to her left to push Saburo back, and to fend off the creature in case it suddenly lunged at him. "Master Saburo, please return home."

It was all she could say in the situation.

"She understands me! Saburo, listen to the girl, won't you? Ah, but don't walk away too far now. I want to make sure you'll see what I'm going to do to her."

Hassan fixed it with a look—it bore no malice, no fear, but seething, threatening anger toward the creature. She whispered to it, "I will not let you hurt Saburo."

The demon grimaced at her, eyes narrowing. "You won't?" it challenged.

The next few seconds, Hassan was silent, not saying a thing, not moving outside of finalizing her defensive stance—when the demon materialized right in front of her, and, before she could react, threw a fist at her that sent her flying backwards, far past Saburo, who appeared almost catatonic, when he whirled around to shout her name.

She rolled several times upon impact with the ground, feeling something in her middle more or less turned into something more tender than usual. That was when grew afraid for her life. Too afraid to even breathe, or even turn around, the air had been knocked right out of her by the sudden, unstoppable force that pummeled her with such intensity that a path of snow had been dug over her trajectory, leading all the way to the side of Saburo's house; her ears were ringing, and her eyes blurred with tears that suddenly appeared in them.

Involuntarily, her body forced vomit blood out of her—and some things that felt solid enough to be cartilage, no doubt. Unable to let them all out as they continued to flow, she forcefully put herself on her knees to prevent herself from choking on the stream of blood rising to her throat. Her arms were useless, feeling much too heavy to move, much less lift. Yet, even before she was able to comprehend just how powerless she was at the moment, a blast of wind blew her further backwards into the wall of the cabin as the demon once again landed in front of her, having had jumped all the way from where she had punched her.

She felt something in her back crack, and knew that the house's wooden exterior gave way to her dislocated shoulder. Her eyes wandered helplessly, and caught a glimpse of the towels she had hung earlier being splattered with what seemed to be her own blood, alongside more ribbons along the ground that laid in stark contrast to the white snow.

"I've always, _always_, wanted to break this little house to pieces, but where was the fun in that?" The creature sauntered up to her fallen form, and gave her an amicable smile. "That was, till you came and offered me a toy I could wreck this shitty house with! So thanks!"

Hassan braced what she could.

The demon wrapped a single, large hand around both of her legs, and lifted her up into the air, and from what she could gather from its words through her splitting headache, it was going to use her as a batting tool to break the house apart. That was when something sizzled within her—too weak to resist, to injured to fight back, something odd occurred—and suddenly, the blood she was leaking out from almost every part of her body returned to being warm after the snow had invaded her insides through opened wounds.

Her ripped skin grew darker, her bloodied hair turning more like a bruise, till she felt the skin of the demon wrapped around her feet peel off—and she was sent flying through the wall and into a corner of the house, dust rising from the force of the blow, with splinters flying everywhere, several stuck onto Hassan's skin, before melting right out. The frigid, raging wind blew through the hole in the wall, rapidly dropping the temperature within the house.

"Ouch, what was that!" the demon complained and inspected its hands, where it found black splotches beginning to discolor its palm. Bewildered, it muttered, "What the…? _Wisteria_…?" _No, that was not it… Was his death finally…?_

Hassan did not hear it. She was struggling to even remain conscious, with what little shreds of mind she could assemble left. She did not know what she could do at that point, but fear compelled her body to move…and it did. With all the strength she could muster, her arm, now completely exposed after the demon had torn away her kimono, rose, and, twitching the entire way, grabbed hold of the _ōdachi_ that she had fallen right next to. She heard her bones crack, and joints she did not know existed—or severely dislocated ones—pop, but at that point, the cold had conveniently numbed her sense of pain, and she slowly stood up, in a daze, holding the end of the sword's bandages in her left hand.

"Impossible…," the demon whispered, then scowling. "Are you a Demon Slayer after all!?"

Saburo rushed to the scene, wheezing hard, seeming more cognizant than before. "Stop this, demon! Hassan has no business with you!" he bellowed till his voice frayed at the edges, something Hassan recognized as what his strained voice sounded like. "_I_ am your target! Not her! **ME**!" His arms flailed around frantically as he gestured to it, to her, and then to himself, and finally he threw a punch at the creature—a feeble attempt to catch its attention, which at least managed to serve to break it out of its reverie of inspecting the splotches on its hand. "Gah!" Saburo recoiled backwards, cradling his arm in pain.

"…Really, Saburo? If you really wanted to die, you should've tried sleeping in the snow in the past. I would've at least given you a painless death while you were asleep!" it breathed quietly, yet intensely to him, still wary of the spots that were not healing, but choosing to turn to its object of interest first. Demons like itself could easily heal themselves of any wounds inflicted upon them by devouring humans, except if they were caused by the sun itself, so it needed to hurry and consume _someone_. The woman was unwrapping the blade—something that was not quite a _Nichirin Blade_, yet still felt _so wrong_—but her unsteady hands and arms were slowing her progress greatly, and her legs threatened to give out under her any time. She was the perfect candidate for its first meal in ages, but it had begun to suspect that her very body was the cause of its injuries, _somehow_…

If it could devour Saburo and regain its strength in time, it could be rid of the dangerous woman quickly. The choice was clear for it to make, but it was still hesitant—something its demonic mind just could not comprehend.

Saburo tried to control his emotions and his breath, but gave up partway when he saw that his efforts were not making a difference. "Please—Please, spare her. I will do _anything_," he begged, shaking his head side-to-side when he finished his sentence, indicating that he was resolved to cast aside his humanity for Hassan's sake, finalizing the gesture with an intense look that was more directed toward himself than the demon itself.

Upon hearing it, unnoticed by the demon and Saburo himself, Hassan snapped out of her pain-induced trance, feeling her adrenaline finally stabilizing, and with a face numbed by shock, tears fell out of her eyes. She choked back her sobs, which would rack her lungs and her throat with scratchy pain if they escaped, but her tightening chest felt fragmented nonetheless. Willfully, she forced out a message to him through the swells in her throat that made the whole for air so much smaller:

"Do not…give in…to sadness, Master Saburo," Hassan breathed more than spoke. "Do not…give in…to that demon." If Saburo died, Hassan would be completely alone, and he would have condemned her to the same fate that he had been suffering through all those years with that creature. She would be left to mourn his death, and to spend countless nights with obsessions of avenging him. She could only imagine how painful it must have been for him—the pain she felt then, with her entire body broken, would be nothing compared to how she would feel with him gone. "Because, if you died," she gave him a serene smile, "_I _will_ die alongside you_."

Giving up on uncoiling the bandages around the blade, she allowed her blood to line them throughout its length, and Hassan instantaneously struck—the demon retaliated the moment it realized what she aimed for, but the blade missed, sinking itself shallowly enough to draw a drop of its blood, but enough to let the poisoned gauze make contact with its flesh, where the demon's left fist that connected with her body sent Hassan flying backwards across the room again. The subsequent gust carried her weight, whereupon she collided with the wall on the other side and collapsed in a pile, incapacitated.

[]

_There were many things about himself that Saburo never told her, but Hassan had come to learn of them herself, nonetheless._

_Though they never visited the village again after the first time, she vividly remembered, through her daze, what it looked like—it was as though she was reliving her past through her ride on his back._

_The looks the villagers gave him had been those of one seeing an outcast. Where he walked, they parted, and to whom he talked, they avoided. While his eyes were usually downcast, they had been attentive at that time, looking for the pharmacy and the tailor they needed—as it had been for her sake, someone he had only met a day ago with no prior introduction, he had tossed aside his own ego in order to aid her. No, perhaps it was because they did not know each other at all that they were able to bond so…and since then, Hassan had only wanted to learn more of him._

_From his unexplained fear of the night, from the walks he would take every morning when he rose earlier than her, from the empty futons he would lay out around his, from the extra food he prepared that would go uneaten, and most of all from her familiarity with the kind of ostracization that he had been subjected to, she understood him more deeply than words could ever convey._

_She knew. She heard. She saw. A stifled cry of anguish was the first thing she heard since arriving in that land, from the one she had come, and it was only much later on that she realized it belonged to him. She knew the things about him that he did not tell her, because she had experienced them for herself._

_And she had cried for him._

_Though she had been silent about a lot of things about herself, so had he. Yet, they both had known, that despite their secrets, they had become a family within those two months that had felt like such a dream for the both of them. Two outcasts who hated themselves found solace in one another._

[]

"_Breath of Water, Second Form: Water Wheel!_"

Saburo barely registered the new voice as tears threatened to spill from his eyes; he was too preoccupied with Hassan's current state to notice that the demon's right arm had fallen off, leaving behind a pitiful stump in its place. They were instantaneous, all seeming to have occurred in the same second: the blood spurting out of their assailant's gaping wound, its terrible screeching, and the arrival of a Demon Slayer with an aura familiar to Saburo. Another familiar face had come back into his life that night, but that time, it was benevolent.

"Mister Saburo, are you hurt?" The boy in a green-and-black checkered _haori_ smiled at him—a gentle look—and doubts about the situation disappeared from his heart. Tanjiro Kamado's arrival imbued his heart with a peace he did not know for a long time; all around him, his world began to slowly repair itself. Not only was the eldest son of the Kamados whom he had provided shelter for that fateful night still alive and well, but he had become the paragon of Saburo's dreams as well.

Hassan's words had struck him deeply, and shook him to his core, but only then did they begin to sink in. He wanted to cry again. How could he? How could he have forgotten the moments he had shared with her, and tried to depart for the afterlife and leave her alone prematurely? Saburo did not realize that he would be leaving behind more victims of his pain to suffer alone, and the shame would have overwhelmed him, except that he was experiencing too much at the moment to even begin.

"DEMON SLAYER!" the demon howled in pain and rage; "Don't think for a second that I will allow you to escape with that—I'll devour your first after all!" At that point, its face was twisted in desperation and was hardly restrained by any composure. Malice was written all over its features, with gnarled veins growling larger over its maw. It grew larger in size, form all but expanding outward till its back touched the ceiling and threatened to bust it open for the elements to invade further.

In response, Tanjiro affixed it with a scowl. "I won't allow you to lay another hand on Uncle Saburo—!"

Tanjiro was well-known for his keen sense of smell. It was what allowed him to evade danger for himself and saved the lives of many others over his career as a Demon Slayer, and even prior to that, his life had been blessed by the ability on a day-to-day basis. The stench of demons, and of blood, were things that had become familiar for him, and him growing accustomed to them prevented them from putting him off-focus ever again. However, though they barely fazed him after his growth, the smell that emanated from the demon before him caused a spontaneous emergence of the bile inside his stomach.

_FsssshhhhHHHH__**HHHH!**_

He almost passed out from the odor.

The demon howled in pain and confusion—no, it more than merely _screamed_; it was as though it tried to claw its own lungs own through screaming alone, and spurts of its blood went flying in all directions, painting the interior of his house red and black. They could not hear what it said clearly through the tongue that lolled in rising foam, but understood that it was bewildered about what was happened to it.

Tanjiro and Saburo watched in silent, morbid awe as its right arm began to collapse in onto itself, starting from its fist, where black, dark spots that were not there before grew larger and larger, into what were seemingly holes being opened in space and pulling parts of it in. Its skin warped in color, going from a gross yellow into a virulent green, mixed with all manners of scarlet and purple as though its blood vessels were undergoing a fantastical mutation. At several points, some points in its body seemed to light up the way that flames would shining through its skin like fireworks violently going off. Bubbles of flesh expanded into translucent membranes before exploding, scattering its slimy blood mixed with gore that melted onto the floor and the walls, staining Saburo's futons permanently.

The splotches continued spreading even further, going across its chest and down its torso, rapidly climbing up its body and invading its face—at this point, the smell became similar to intense, concentrated fumes mixed with the worst-smelling flowers being burnt with dangerous chemicals, and Tanjiro had to cover his own nose with his arm to prevent himself from losing his nose, and they both had to shut their eyes from the irritation that their eyes were beginning to water from.

Soon enough, its bones crumbled into goop, and no longer was its form supported. It became a steaming pile of liquefied flesh, which would not end as even that—the mass decomposed further, turning colorless as it went, undergoing chemical processes that denatured its very molecular make-up. Its voice dissipated, giving away to mere sizzling noises as the unknown toxins ate up the demon. Tanjiro had stared in bewildered shock for a few moments before he took the initiative to evacuate Saburo as all that occurred, and gradually they were left with natural silence as traces of the demon ever being there disappeared from the face of the mountain altogether.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Family Tree

"_Nanashi" was an orphan without a name, with weak legs that could carry her no further than ten paces an hour a day. She had been stuck in the village she was born in since her birth, though she never truly was able to understand the concept of that in and of itself, and spent her days watching the clouds to take her mind off of her famished stomach._

_The one thing she cherished in her short life was an expensive watch with a broken face—its hands ticked nonetheless, even though she suspected that the time it showed was incorrect. She had found it discarded on the side of the street, thrown away by a rich man who saw no use in something that could not fulfill its purpose—but Nanashi disagreed. Though she could have sold it for scraps of food, or even simply tossed it aside for being a burden to carry in her frail hands, she saw it as a beautiful thing whose tick-tock lullaby drew her mind away from her hunger at night._

_She was content living that way, clutching a broken watch in her hands and sitting in the corner of a dark alleyway in a time-worn village, but it appeared that nothing lasted forever, even for an orphan waiting to die._

_Her memories were wiped when Muzan forced his blood into her and burned away her humanity, and though she had long lost her watch, the sound of grounding clockwork stayed close within her fractured mind, but it had become a reminder of something long gone to her; as a demon, it had become an unscratchable itch—something that bothered her, and tried to remind her of _something_._

_The demonic instincts overriding her own had made her believe, at first, that it must have been the hunger for human flesh common among all of them. That had been her theory at first as well, but when the people she devoured did not ease that feeling, she simply stopped doing it. One might have thought that it was an oddity as far as demons went, but had Nanashi been conscious of the length of time she went without eating people, she would have answered that it was her time as a human that had taught her to be content with what she had._

_That had lasted till she came across Saburo—a human whose smell she immediately knew as _marechi_. His smell watered her mouth and barraged her nose all day from when she first saw him, and it made her days so vitalized, so _meaningful_. For the first time since she came into existence, be it as a human or a demon, it was the first time that _Nanashi_ felt something at all—the watch might have been something she had clung on to, but Saburo's blood was the anchor tied around her feet._

_That was why she did not kill him—could not bring herself to. She was afraid that when she did, that feeling would go away as well, and she would be forced to simply bear the unending sounds of the watch that had long disappeared; of a phantom past she had forgotten._

_However, it was also why she had slaughtered his family when they grew to conceal his smell with theirs. Saburo, who had become her meaning, had become dimmer to her—and she could not take it when the sound she had been escaping for so long returned to haunt her. The demon slayers could detect her after she had killed them, and that was why she had run for so long after that._

_Years passed during her escape, and the starvation and the loss of the wonderful feeling grew to take a toll on her form. Her body was wracked with all manners of pain, and she could not bear it—the veins under her skin expanded and became gnarled, as though to accommodate her malnourished form, and to escape that pain she had restructured her body forcefully; if her humanoid form tortured her so, perhaps she could perceive the pain as something else in a different type of body._

_She did not know when exactly it was that she returned to that mountain that bore her "meaning"—something that had morphed during her time away from it—but it felt like returning home to her nonetheless._

_It was why a violent, strangely frightening anger ignited within her when she saw that young woman live with Saburo. After having had to run for years away from home, she would have to repeat that process alone. Her veins shifted under her skin, and the blood of the dead progenitor within them boiled._

_For months she watched the young woman from afar, with intensely hateful eyes that Nanashi herself feared; she did not understand what had taken over her, but it was something more foreign that her demonization had been, and even though the beats of her heart had become louder with it to drown out the clock's sounds, she did not know whether to feel happy about it or fearful._

_There then came a time when she observed her habits and her hobbies, her explorations into the woods, the chores she helped with in the house, the exotic nightly prayers she held for herself when the _marechi_ was asleep, the lessons in language that he gave her, and the meals that she and Saburo had together—she saw them all, and her envy lit._

_When the toxins from the young woman's body burned her away, it also turned the blood of the vile demon inside her veins to dust. She did not hear the sound of the acidic venom melting away her flesh, but the unending sound of the clock in her mind grew loud enough to become deafening, and eventually it was all she could hear._

_That woman who had suddenly entered the life that Nanashi had made with Saburo on that mountain had reawoken something strange within her. A feeling of longing—but it was different from the longing she felt when she was hungry, for example, but it was only in her last moments did she realize it was jealousy—an oddly _human_ thing to feel._

_As the last of her being burned down, the sound stopped—and she finally realized what it was: The clock she treasured as a human had been reminding her of the days long gone; of her humanity, and for the last time, it lulled her to sleep._

[]

Hassan did not know when she woke up, or where she did, but it was all she could do to watch the ceiling of the shelter she was in and try to make out the obscure details of the woodwork in the darkness. She felt like a slab of concrete, or cement, wrapped up in a hard pipe where she laid, unable to feel a thing in her body aside from her own breaths. She did not think; for a while, she merely _was_.

The obscure darkness was like wisps of smoke in the air; where her eyes had adjusted to it, the wisps gave way and covered the other parts and periphery of her vision like a spiral, and like a haze, it began to make it harder for her to breathe. It smelled of something damp, and her wheezes became more labored and more audible to her own throbbing ears, ringing in the darkness.

She did not know how much time had passed like that, but the longer it went, the more apparent it became to her that her breaths were accompanied by the light snoring of others in the room.

She was vaguely aware of how warm she felt in the sheets covered over her, but it did not stop the fact that her skin was still cold. The soles of her feet were numb with a prickly sensation of an uncontrollable chill, the slight folds of her skin at the bottom accentuated the slightness of what she felt. For a while, she stayed in that position and did nothing but rub her toes together, trying to make her feel something at all, even if it meant that the resulting friction only made her feel clammy underneath. She was not thinking the entire time; she was merely awake, but not conscious.

After a while, she suddenly stopped, closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep again, not noticing the robed figure that towered over her form, cloaked in darkness. Had she been sober, perhaps she would have reacted to it.

_Perhaps_.

Likely not….

[]

What first infiltrated her consciousness was a tiny pinprick ray of light perforating the earliest of many entrances into her waking mind. As the light spread to her eyes, Hassan's body stirred in its deep slumber, before she finally opened them to see the world again.

What greeted her was an unfamiliar sight: There was a girl, strangely small, with long black hair and pink irises and a short length of bamboo in her mouth, seeming to function as a gag of some sort. Yet, she did not appear to be a hostage, and despite her neotenous appearance, she did not look to be of an age where she needed a pacifier…

Upon the meeting of their eyes, the girl perked up, but before Hassan could react—she could not, after all—she stood up to her full height, which did not go beyond the size of a ten-year-old, and sprinted away in an almost-comical manner, her steps making pitter-patter noises that echoed clearly through the room. Spurred on by the thought of Saburo's whereabouts and safety, Hassan made to sit up, with a lot of effort and pain, and found her back propped against an empty side of the wall of a spacious living room.

It was a humble place, without much decoration, and the furniture within were simplistic-looking things that served one purpose or another. There was a thin layer of dust that had gathered on the surface of some things, such as the tabletops as well as some drawers, but instead of giving it the look of an abandoned house, it instead breathed an air of misdirected nostalgia to her. It might be due to the fact that other places in the room had the slight sheen of droplets of water over them. Planting a hand on the cool floor outside her futon as she made to rise, the air began to assault her skin with slight licks of chill where the blanket no longer covered her.

Not long after Hassan sat herself up and tried to reorient her senses while taking note of the medical patches placed on several parts of her body, the girl who had scuttled away reappeared at a doorway leading to the room she must have had entered earlier, but as she stepped out, Hassan met her eyes with the person who followed the girl's emergence from the room behind her.

The word that she would use to describe him was "warm", like the sun. The boy radiated kindness like an aroma, and the burdens on her body seemed to be lifted for the moments he came into view. He had bright burgundy eyes, a rounded face, and dark hair slicked back to show off peculiar markings on the left side of his forehead, which resembled something like inky flames. When his eyes turned toward hers, they lit up, almost too similarly to the way the little girl's had earlier, and he quickly made to set aside the damp towels he was holding on the top of a nearby drawer before approaching her, the little girl following by his feet like a small pet.

Hassan tried to move, but flinched when something in her abdomen seized up and clamped down, which made her clutch her stomach in pain and bend over forward, her elbows sinking into the thick blanket. She barely registered the boy's pace speeding up when he suddenly appeared right beside her, and he said something to her, the concern seeping into his voice apparent despite her understanding little of his words.

It took several moments for the pain to subside, but the boy did not leave her side throughout all of it, laying her down only when her muscles relaxed. Hassan did not think of how he knew when the pain had gone, just that he did. When she resisted a bit, the boy communicated something to her differently, and this time she deciphered a bit of it; he was telling her to lay back down, and she only reluctantly agreed after a second of worry. The little girl with him was making calming motions with her hands, where she lowered them both repeatedly as her fingers pointed at each other.

She looked at her, trying to figure her age out—the girl was not a child, that much she knew, but she seemed so much like one despite the level of intelligence she could see within her eyes, and it baffled her to no end in her pain-riddled mind at the time. Hassan only let up on her thoughts when the girl gave her a smile—almost difficult to tell due to the bamboo mouthpiece she wore, but conveyed nonetheless from how it reached her eyes.

As she laid back down, she could not help but worry about where Saburo was, when the boy spoke with simple Japanese, "My name is Tanjiro Kamado. What's yours?" It sounded like his name. _Tanjiro…Kamado…_ He had an easygoing smile that carried an amicable air. Hassan could not help but relax herself at the sight.

She blinked at him, noting that he must have picked up on her difficulty understanding him earlier, before responding with the name she had given Saburo months earlier. "I am Hassan."

In truth, Hassan was not her actual name—but it was the one name she had as far as she remembered, and one that could at least work as one for introductory purposes. It was, for her, a reminder of her roots, even though she sometimes would have preferred for it not to have been that way, and also something that reinforced the practices she carried out each evening, or since she began to live with Saburo, each night.

The small girl suddenly hopped onto the blanket and made herself comfortable on it, reclining herself. Hassan had expected an impact where she landed, but she hardly registered a weight being applied on her knee.

"Ah, Nezuko!" Tanjiro yelped, but mindfully kept his voice toned down. He stood up a little and went to pick her up by her underarms, to which Nezuko responded as though she was being held like a baby. "I'm sorry, Nezuko tends to get carried away with meeting new people sometimes. I guess she particularly finds you approachable…."

Hassan, while she would respond in a variety of different ways, ranging from telling him that it was alright and that Nezuko did not bother her, to thanking him for his thoughtful consideration, but not only was her Japanese not as proficient as she would like when comparing how her responses sounded in her native tongue, but the question of where Saburo was weighed on her mind more and more as time went on. Her anxiety that he might no longer be around had grown to an unbearable level.

Against her volition, she felt her body heating up towards that concern.

As she barely registered Tanjiro talking about how the "Kakushi" had repaired his home during his time in an organization whose name she could not quite make out, and other things, like where they were located at the time compared to the previous night, she slowly rose out of the futon, and that time, she flinched only once, and bore through with it. On shaky legs, she scaled the house toward the entrance, the medical patches falling off as she kept her left hand along the wall while her body grew accustomed to the pain and dulling it as she went.

She felt Tanjiro and Nezuko approaching slowly from behind, but chose to ignore them for the time being—their company had been nice, but she had other things in mind at the time.

Things important to her.

"Wait," Tanjiro suddenly said, his voice somehow more loud and clear than before, stopping her in her tracks. "Uncle Saburo said that he'll be waiting for you. He didn't say where, but…that's what he asked us to tell you."

Hassan slowly nodded at him, realizing that she was wearing a warm kimono that he had put over her shoulders some time along the way to the door. "Thank you, Tanjiro Kamado."

With that, Hassan began her walk toward the tree of the knowledge of life and death.

[]

The walk to find Saburo felt somewhat surreal. Perhaps it was the pain that she internalized that made the cold tolerable, or waking up in a stranger's home that felt odd, but Hassan moved, nonetheless. She let the numbness her body took felt from the snow to strengthen herself. There was no wind, just a stagnant chill, the wintry winds having died down in favor of a frigid atmosphere hanging in the air. Where the trees did not block her view over the hills, she looked into the horizon and saw a sky enveloped with cascading clouds, as though it was a wall built by an army to prevent breaches from the other side.

She stepped out of the clearing the house she exited had been built upon, and found a trail of footprints left in the snow, and followed it into the woods outside. As she stepped her sandals into them, she looked around her, and saw the woods through Saburo's eyes, where he walked. A branch that had multiple twigs sprouting at the end, a tree whose trunk looked like a spiral, branches high above which bifurcated into two, one going up and the other pointing downward…

The trees began to thin out, their trunks becoming narrower as she moved further along into the woods, and down the hills. She stepped over gnarly trunks with prickly splinters, scratched a toe on one of them, and stepped onward further, following his footprints steadfast. She stepped on a fallen log, filled with snow, but whose outside lent her no chill, and as she went, she found several more that were all but dying, each more hollow than the last. Along the way, she found many nests, filled with feathers shed by departed birds on the branches closer to her height, but they became more sparse as she walked.

Upon the stumps of dead trees she found freezing sprouts, yet found no snow collecting on their little leaves. She went further in, and suddenly found a curtain of snow slowly descending through the air. It thickened as she went on, the trees growing closer and more huddled together this time, as though forming a roof. Saburo's footprints grew less and less apparent as roots covered more ground, but she followed where the snow collected in the earth, suspecting that she was no longer walking the path he took.

The trees began to look damaged, marked with claws too deep to be that of a bear's, to torn apart to be caused by a hatchet, yet they looked to be old marks, snow filling them in where she found them, while other seemed misshapen and dark. She saw faces on their bark, of narrow slits looking like eyes, branches pointing toward her like daggers.

The trek continued for a little longer, before she finally came to a clearing where she found a final nest on the ground, the feathers in it plucked apart and scattered in the snow around it almost fully disappeared from view by the powder ice that fell over them. On the other side was Saburo, his back facing her as he looked at a tree larger than the rest whose trunk was concealed from her by his form. He was dressed too lightly for the snow, and in his hand was a hatchet. His shoulders were slumped, and the curtain of snow that descended earlier had ceased its fall for the time being. Behind him was a miniscule pile of fabric—his own kimono that he had discarded.

A clear trail of footprints led up to where he stood then, but Hassan had emerged from another side. She walked towards him, approaching silently, leaving behind footprints of her own that joined his where he stood.

They were silent for a while. Hassan did not peer around him to see his face, but Saburo had acknowledged her presence when he sighed, letting out a long puff of perspire into the frigid air.

"Hassan," came his gruff voice. It was a tone he did not usually use, darker than usual, and indicative of upset, but she noted a slight difference from its normal sound. It carried resignation in his breath. "Thank you for coming."

She was silent before she found the words to respond with. "I attend to you as you wish, Master Saburo." She felt it was not all she wanted to say, and thus continued, stiffly, with her limited vocabulary, "I am glad to see you are safe."

He waited a bit, as though hesitant, before he gestured to her to stand beside him, moving away from the tree and making space for her beside him. Wordlessly, Hassan understood he wanted her to see it. Upon its bark were characters in Japanese, engraved with a knife. There were a few of them, spaced out as though independent words where the characters separated.

Hassan noted something interesting about them: All of them were crossed out by something larger than a knife, like a thick claw—all of them but one, which was carved into the middle of the tree with whatever it was that had scratched out the rest, messily, and brutally.

"_三郎"_

_Sa. Bu. Ro._

"They are the names of my family that I carved into this tree," Saburo said, placing a hand on the bark, his fingers slightly shaky as he spread them out to feel. "I have visited this tree almost every evening for twenty years now, ever since I lost them to the demon you slew last night."

Hassan recognized the tree. It was the one she had fallen unconscious by the previous afternoon, when she went on her exploration into the woods. The characters she saw were names of the family Saburo had had long before she even arrived in his home…

"Every evening I came here to talk with my children, till one evening seven years ago I found this place turned into a list." As his tone rose towards the end, Hassan's heart pumped heat through her blood, and she noticed Saburo's grip on his hatchet tightening, before it went slack again, willfully. "For a long time I could only fear for my own life and mourn the dead. But ever since you came, I visited this place less and less.

"I've been afraid of making a new future for myself. I didn't understand whether it was even possible or not. 'The demon could follow me if I moved.' 'The demon could attack me if I went out past eight.' 'The demon could devour the Kamados if they did not flee the mountain.' It was only two years ago that I realized that no matter how much I feared things, they happen nonetheless. That was when I began to think about the future."

He chuckled a bit, bitterly and angrily, rubbing his face with his free hand. "I've considered yelling at the demon to eat me for the past several months before you arrived," he said through his hand. At that, Hassan breathed in more deeply than before, her anger suddenly quelled. "And only recently, I've been thinking that if it's with you, I think I can be brave enough, even just for a bit, to look forward. I've been considering taking you to this place for the past week. I think this was the perfect time to do it.

"_Arigatō_, Hassan." Saburo tensed up, readying his hatchet, and swung at the tree. It took her a few moments to realize what he was doing, and by the time she understood, he had struck two more blows into it. Splinters flew away from the impacts, but not wildly, and not dangerously. They scattered themselves onto the snow around the tree as it shook with each strike, his pace slow and steady, focused and measured, but before long, Saburo's breaths had grown heavy, and he started to slow, weak, yet he showed no signs of stopping, but something was clear to her—his voice, then raspy, contained a hollow grief he desperately fought back with each strike.

Before she realized it, she had taken a step closer to his slight frame, aged with stress and grief. Watching his back tremble with effort incited a determination within her, and right before the hatchet in his hands slipped out of his thin fingers, she reached out for it and caught in her palm, wrapping her other hand around his as she linked the fingers holding the axe with his own.

They looked at each other, and the both of them affirmed their wills. With a heaving breath that felt stronger than any other breath Hassan had taken in before, they swung the axe together, burying its blade within the trunk of the tree deeper and deeper than the last blow they delivered. They repeated this process, with bodies in sync and drives aligned. With every reiteration the names on the bark grew more obscure and unrecognizable, and Hassan watched them closely as they tore away, little by little, burning the images into her memory—and she knew that Saburo did the same, but far more intently.

She could not imagine what kinds of thoughts were going through his mind at the time, but she knew it must shake him much more profoundly than it did to herself, yet they did not stop. She felt his arms steadfast beside hers, his breaths no longer trembling, but still labored from the exertion, and the mental toll the felling was putting on him. Despite that they continued, till finally they landed the last swing of the hatchet to the tree that toppled it into the ground with a resounding crash.

The descending snow hung in the air for several still moments—their breaths were all that they could hear around them, their lungs frozen cold by the chilly air they had sucked in, and their limbs hot under the fabric tightening around them—before it resumed with Saburo dropping backward into the snow, sitting down in it with a thud, the hatchet falling down nearby. Hassan stayed standing, looking on in awe at their handiwork.

Waiting a few moments and breathing in and out several times to calm down her heart rate, Hassan took off her kimono and covered his shoulders in it, offering her hand to him, which he accepted. She helped him stand up and held him close to her to steady him, and after a few more relaxing breaths together, they made to return to the Kamados'.

That was, until a loud, haughty voice echoed throughout the clearing.

"I thought I was watching a scene out of a drama written by an amateur playwright for a while, there! Well, at least you managed to occupy my attention for a short moment."

From within the woods nearby emerged a blond man in a garish _hakama_ and a flowing coat with gold embroidery etched along its edges. He wore fanciful _geta_ with white socks, which looked more expensive than footwear had any right to be.

"I was beginning to think that you were going to stand there alone forever," he continued, stifling a yawn mid-sentence in a way that Hassan was both impressed at and baffled by, "and I was beginning to think that my trip here had been a waste of time! I was just ready to leave the place when she entered, and because of it I got to watch a cheesy moment play out!"

A dagger… If only she had a dagger to throw at his smug face… He might be a man, but she wouldn't hesitate punching his face in if he did not stop belittling them… Hassan's fingers twitched at her side for a belt that was not there…till she realized something peculiar: She understood every word he said.

"Mmm? What's with that look? Mongrel, —" _What._ "—you seem both vexed, and dumbfounded by the fact that I would grace common peasants like the both of you with my presence." His talking…did he ever stop? She wondered when he would stop speaking and insulting Master Saburo, till he mentioned something interesting about her—"Very well! I am in a generous mood today. If you wish to continue basking in my splendor, then have at it! After all, nothing could improve my day when I find the last **Storm Slayer** ready for recruiting, who's also a middling **Breath User** at best!"

"King Gilgamesh," Saburo began, bringing her attention back to him with those two words, the latter of which sounded like a name to her. _King?_ "You didn't sleep with us last night. Was young Tanjiro's abode not lavish enough for you?"

"It's not a matter of luxury, Mister Saburo—" Hassan was relieved he didn't address him the same way he did her. "—I had all but discarded whatever expectations I had had for that when I first stepped foot on this small, primitive country of yours. It's rather a matter of," he paused as he dug his hand under his _haori_ and pulled out a _very_ familiar-looking sword; "looking into this _ōdachi_, you see, and whether or not this really is the final **Blade of Calamity** in Japan."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Fleetingly

"King Gilgamesh, if you don't mind me asking…?"

"Go ahead. Voice your thoughts."

"What are you doing so far away from the Demon Slayer headquarters?"

_Sip_. "Ah, this tea isn't quite up to par, but no matter. To answer your question, leaving the scene for a while is a good way for me to scout the situation across Japan. It gives me my own perspectives outside the reports I receive."

Tanjiro swallowed the rice he had put into his mouth after feeding Nezuko with some as well, her bamboo mouthpiece taken off. Hassan noticed that she had quite sharp, pointed teeth; the last place she saw the mouthpiece was in the sink. "I see. That makes sense. I suppose that thinking that you just wanted a break was quite impertinent of me, then, though I wouldn't blame you if you did. It has been very busy, after all." 

King Gilgamesh let out a chortle, and it almost sounded disgruntled to Hassan's ears, though it might simply be an audial tic that the golden man carried as far as she knew.

Tanjiro continued, "I'm just worried about little Kiriya. Are you sure leaving him behind to handle the workload while you're gone is a good idea?"

"Normally I would berate you for questioning my wisdom, but your concerns are well-founded, Kamado. Although I have my new duty as the acting head of the Corps, I am not a permanent replacement. Ubuyashiki has had enough rest since I first came by. If anything, he ought to use the introspection I expect him to have undergone during the period to improve his strategy with dealing with the ongoing affairs."

King Gilgamesh put down his chopsticks over the rim of an empty bowl as he put in the final slice of fish into his mouth. Chewing and swallowing, he resumed, "Even so, I would have told him to send Kasugai crows to alert me of anything too important for him to do alone, but with them being ill at the time, we just have to put our faith in him. He will grow to be the next Head, after all. Nay, he already is."

Saburo raised an eyebrow at that behind a cup of tea, drinking its content through the steam that rose from it. "That is a little irresponsible of you, in my humble opinion, King Gilgamesh. Although this may not be your own organization, nor your own country, you were assigned the duty and accepted it voluntarily, no? However, if you believe that this is the best course of action for the time being, I can see that your deep wisdom will not let them down. For now, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt."

"Fuhahaha! I'm glad you understand!" Hassan flinched slightly at the second clause, as did Saburo. "I would have had you executed on the spot for that insolent tone you adopted, but for looking after the last **Storm Slayer** for me, I will pardon you."

They continued their meal, before noticing that the king had stopped. "You finished your meal very quickly… King, if I may, would you like some of mine?" Tanjiro offered, feeling bad that he did not prepare more.

"I am fine, Tanjiro. Thank you for your concern." Across from Hassan he sat, with his eyes closed and back straight. Though he may be of great arrogance, his conduct backed his demeanor. "One simply has no opportunity to savor their meals as king. Once the plates are set before him, he has no choice other than to finish as quickly as he can, for more work awaits him. I suppose that that habit arose from my time as a ruler."

Looking closer, Hassan…noticed…that he was beautiful. Perhaps it had been the manner of their first encounter earlier; the distance between them and the snow that was falling had obscured her view of his countenance, but now that she was able to take a closer look, she could not help but find herself staring.

_No, this is _haram_!_ Hassan pulled away making herself look at the food prepared for her instead, which was still more abundant than the rest's due to how she had been preoccupied with stealing looks at the king ever since they entered the house again. She felts eyes burning into her the first time she looked away in shock at what she had done, but nobody in the room indicated that they saw her…except perhaps, someone unseen.

From atop Tanjiro's lap sat a small Nezuko, short enough to conceal herself from view where Hassan sat, but tall enough to peer over the edge at the young woman. Hassan might not know, but Nezuko herself _knew_ what she had been doing.

Nezuko's stealthily oppressive gaze broke off when she turned her attention to Tanjiro as he shifted underneath her. "If everyone is finished, please turn them in to me," he said with a smile as he rose gently, his young sister hopping a bit away from his thighs to begin collecting emptied plates and to-be-washed utensils from around the room for him. "I'll take care of cleaning them!"

Inwardly, Hassan complained, still flustered from her internal crisis. _You kid me!_ she thought as she tried to salvage the much that she had yet to have eaten and picking them up between her chopsticks, but her relatively new introduction to the utensils made it difficult for her to keep the food in the air long enough to let them enter her mouth, especially when she was panicking.

Before she knew it, she felt Saburo's tray beside her taken away by someone, followed by the drop of two small feet on the floor by her. With apprehension, Hassan slowly turned to make eye contact with the girl standing in wait. Nezuko puffed up her chest in response and held out her hands.

Hassan was about to hand over the plates to her in defeat, when Tanjiro called out to her as he picked up King Gilgamesh's plates; "You can take your time with your meal, Miss Hassan. I can wait till you're done."

She nodded in thanks, hopeful again, till she turned back to her tray…with empty bowls and plates in place, Nezuko chewing on something, a few grains of rice sticking to her cheeks. As she swallowed she gave her an innocent look. King Gilgamesh let out a hearty laugh at that, making her realize that he must have seen everything that happened—_without saying anything_.

"Nezuko!" Setting aside the plates on a cabinet by the kitchen sink, Tanjiro dried his hands off on a towel and made light strides across the wooden floorboards of the room. "I'm sorry, Nezuko doesn't usually act like this! She was never naughty towards anyone…." At that, Nezuko froze up in her spot, before moving to hide under the table, which she could easily slide under without even having to crouch in the slightest bit—something Hassan, for a reason she would not like to think about, envied. She and Saburo followed where she went based on her stature through the table's surface, till their eyes landed at the king's side, staying close to the foreign man.

He hummed in fascination and amusement, caressing the girl's head lightly, wiping her face with a napkin. Then he said something that surprised both Hassan and Saburo: "How interesting that this girl still retains some of her inhibitions as a demon, despite having been cured into returning to becoming a human….

"Well, whatever." The blond man stood up, prompting Nezuko to grab a tiny handful of his clothing, though she did so only gently. The light in the room was blocked as he rose, turning him into a slight silhouette in the dim evening to her. The voice that he would then speak in was different from before—"Hassan…or, should I call you _the Hassan of Serenity_? Who, or what exactly are you?"

[]

Something in her heart would not let her calm down, no matter how much she tried—no, did she even want to try?

"Miss Hassan, please calm down!"

"Hassan, what is going on!?"

"Rahh?"

The way her heart beat—it felt hypnotic to her limbs, luring an attack outside from within the depths of her body. In a fist, she held Gilgamesh's collar, and in the other, the _ōdachi_ that she pulled out from inside his robe. She held it by its sheath—something new that they must have put on it the night before, where Tanjiro tightened his fingers around its handle and the tip, wresting it from her control without taking it away—something she did not doubt he could do judging from the sheer amount of strength on the other side of the length.

Nezuko tried to push Hassan off of their guest, but without her demonic strength, she could not even budge the dark woman from her spot. Saburo watched from where he stood and tried to get through to her from afar, yet his words landed on deaf ears, while Gilgamesh himself stared back at her with unfeeling, piercing eyes. The way he looked at her indicated not the slightest bit of apprehension or fear. He probably knew what she could do—anyone who knew that name would—yet, despite that, he remained unmoved; something that irritated something within her.

They stayed that way for a while, the air hanging over them tense and deafeningly silent, till eventually, the lethal assassin, Hassan, pulled away, reluctantly. It was not of her own true volition, however—her backing away was influenced by something within the king's presence, which had become far more eerie than it had been from the moment they first met.

Anger and fear and confusion still burned in her heart at the evocation of that name, but she stood down nonetheless, taking a few steps backward in tip-toes. Saburo furrowed his brows at the sudden change in atmosphere that had taken place earlier, trying to understand where Hassan's left foot disappeared to…before he realized that it was hidden _underneath_ the floorboards, somehow, revealed when she stood up straight in the end.

"Then it is true…," muttered King Gilgamesh after the pause of silence. He accepted the sword that she left in Tanjiro's hands, holding them observantly. "Since this is the Blade of Calamity, you truly are a phantom from the past." His tone was somber, almost distasteful, but the solemnity of what he just said belied the courtesy he treated the _ōdachi_ with.

"_Phan…tom_…." Saburo sounded conflicted behind her for a moment, before his voice changed to sound apathetic halfway through saying the word alone.

Putting away the sword, the golden man answered him, "I do not suppose that a Japanese villager living in the countryside would know much about the history of the Middle East." Hassan shuffled her feet uncomfortably, biting down on her lip without meeting anyone's eyes. "Listen up as well, Kamados, this shall be your introduction to the **Storm Slayer** you'll be supervising: She is a _Hassan_, or an _Old Man of the Mountain_; a generational leader who led a cult of Muslim assassins who brutally murdered their political enemies in the past." He raised a finger—_accusatory_—to point at her, whose gaze, cast down toward her feet, was concealed by shadows behind her bangs.

"She was known as the Hassan of Serenity, a mistress in the art of poison."

With that, the one of the many memories that the name had almost evoked within her finally broke through the barrier her assault had erected in her mind.

[]

_He was limp in her arms, unresponsive, silent. His eyes were open, but they did not see. Under his skin, his heart signaled no pulse, and at the edge of his lips, there was froth gathering—and dripping down her still arm. She did not move; she only watched, half in disbelief, and half in quiet understanding of what she had just done._

_Her eyes were empty, yet she wanted to scream. Her breath was even, yet she wanted to thrash. Her chest was trembling with sobs, yet she wore a laugh. They said that behind closed doors, one could be whomever they truly were. Yet, for her, who had been born to embody poisons and toxins, fate had resigned her to carrying out the duty of the Hassans; of the _Hashashins_._

_She had wanted to embrace the man in her arms, but could only savor the warmth that was rapidly slipping away from him—something that had happened too many times, with many other men. None of that had needed to happen, and she had wanted no part in it nonetheless, but as a tool, she knew full well that if she ever fell short of her duty…_

"Then the one called the 'Founder' would take your head. Am I wrong?"

At the name, Hassan flinched, looking up in response to the gentle tone of voice from the king. A lone tear separated itself from her lash in the motion. It did not eat away at the wood of the floor. Tanjiro hugged Nezuko close to him; the girl had a look of concern etched onto her face. She could not see what Saburo was doing, but she knew he must be listening intently, albeit quietly.

"The one known as the Hassan among Hassans," he continued, maintaining her eye contact—for some reason, she couldn't look away, only listening. "The first Old Man of the Mountain; the founder of the cult of assassination… He hunted down the Hassans who indulged in worldly pleasures instead of practicing the order's beliefs and embodying them.

"…It must have been hard for you, child."

Her heart calmed at those words, and only then did she notice how loud her breaths were ringing in her ears. Dry, empty breaths. She sucked in as much air as her lungs allowed, and soon she realized that she was holding back sobs. Though her vision suddenly blurred at what he said last, something warm bloomed in her chest. It was a pleasant feeling, unlike anything she felt when she was a _hashashin_.

She wiped her tears away, and slowly looked toward Saburo, catching a glimpse of a soft smile on Tanjiro's face as she turned. He was sitting down again, smoking his _kiseru_, almost nonchalantly…almost. He had a thoughtful look on his face, despite his shut eyes seeming as though dreaming. "I've known, Hassan," he began, with a deep sigh, puffing out a miniature cloud of smoke that scattered into the air of the room. "Not the whole story, but I've picked up on enough of it while we lived together."

He gave her a kindly smile. "It is all in the past. To me, what matters, Hassan, is that you're here now."

[]

King Gilgamesh sat himself beside Saburo under the full moon and hung a leg over the _engawa_, the way the latter did as he smoked. Its gentle, blue light illuminated the leaves of the trees surrounding the Kamado Estate.

"The moon is bright tonight," Saburo commented. "I've never seen it this bright in many years."

In the sky, surrounding the moon like a frame, were dark, phantom wisps of clouds, like disembodied smoke. The snow that rested on the ground looked like a clean blanket over a soft bed, but the previously concealed brown wetness that stuck to the sole of Gilgamesh's _geta_ as he lowered them into it broke that illusion fairly quickly.

"It's quite an honor to have you join a commoner like me, King Gilgamesh," he said in greeting, somewhat despondently.

"Do not make a mention of it," the foreigner said as he settled down beside him. "I am only doing as I please here. I have no need for luxuries outside my own country. Are you not usually someone who stays inside when the clock strikes eight, Mister Saburo? Unless you believe that the presence of the Pillar-in-making will insulate you from any demonic harm as long as you stay here?"

He grunted with a slight hint of mirth in his throat. "You see through me easily, though you must also admit that those clairvoyant eyes of yours are reaching below their threshold when used on a humble villager such as me."

The Envoy from Uruk folded his arms close to his chest, relaxing himself with a trace of a smile gracing his features. "Such eyes are not needed to make that inference, Mister Saburo. It is also the same for your lie earlier this evening."

"What might you be referring to?"

"I'm talking about the falsehood you slipped to Serenity. Your lie." He turned his previously downcast eyes toward the moon. "You never actually saw a killer in her all this time, did you?"

"…No. I just saw a normal person in her. Youthful. Full of life. Gentle and compassionate… I imagine it was how she would have lived her life in the past, if she could.

"But I still do not understand what you told us last night, when you found us during the aftermath of the demon's attack." Saburo's brows formed a deep scowl, and his mouth turned downward in a frown, lines deepening between his cheeks. "You called her a phantom… Does this mean that—"

"I have made it more than clear, have I not? This _Hassan_ of yours is a **Storm Slayer**. We do not know much about them yet, but we have a centralized headquarters to fight back against the **Globalized Storm Phenomenon** in the Dutch East Indies," the king almost snapped back, continuing on without breaking a sweat, but was mindful enough of his pace to keep Saburo's mind at attention. "Reports from around the world that circulate through there in the Eastern hemisphere all indicate the same thing: Apparitions of the mythical and concrete pasts have shown themselves in the present, holding greatswords of the respective cultures they manifested in. Hassan herself displays all those characteristics, does she not, especially now that we all have verified her true identity?"

There was a terse silence between them. King Gilgamesh did not yet address his main concern, and the both of them knew it. Saburo was a sharper man that he would appear; that much was apparent then, that Gilgamesh had had the time to familiarize himself with the cautious approach the aging man took to everything.

They both did nothing for a while; Saburo had put aside his _kiseru_, and all they could hear was the silence flowing through the night air. The moon no longer seemed so bright anymore.

He sighed quietly, and finally let go of his bated breath.

"Yes. At the end of all this, Hassan will most likely disappear."

The king had lived long, and seen through many things most men and women would not be able to in ten lifetimes. He had been delivered grave news of death by his people, and announced difficult times to come to them in return. The expressions that they would wear would often be wracked with despair, or solemn, with pained tones underlying their sense of duty to respond, yet the king saw through all of it, always. He himself had grown desensitized to it, admittedly.

Saburo himself was no different, but he responded quickly. "I see," he said, and nothing more. It was an uncommon tactic to cope; a quick response eliminated the time in which one could dwell on the matter. Before he knew it, the man had already puffed out a cloud of smoke into the air, larger than any he had made before. From where Gilgamesh sat, the cloud swirled into a spiral where the moon hung in the sky, and like the lives of all those he had overseen in the past, disappeared wonderfully, quietly, discreetly.

Fleetingly.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Flight

It was before the first light of dawn that it happened.

At first it started as a gradual build-up, before culminating in an explosion of feelings in Tanjiro's heart; it was something that seethed and writhed in his chest, and finally crushed his breast. He woke with a choke—a sob—before it corrupted into a Breath that stilled his mind.

Something fell away from his forehead—his temple—with the sweat that slicked his skin. He stared into the darkness in a daze, unable to distinguish between what his mind saw and what his eye perceived. Memories phased into reality, and out, and the faint outline of the room would only retreat to the back of his consciousness in favor for images of the battles he fought, only coming to the forefront of his mind when thoughts of his recent past died down.

Sounds drummed his ears, phantom noises he could not make out—yet something told him that if he tried, he could hears things he had drowned out when they happened; things he did not want to hear—screams of comrades he knew, and of allies he did not know. Souls he could not save—that he effectively damned, with lost limbs, shed blood, gaping mouths, and rent skin—and beneath his own, crawled the lingering evil of the last demon he had fought.

The malice that burnt within Muzan's blood coursed through his body, and it took everything he had within himself everyday to resist collapsing on the spot. The Breath of Fire helped stave off the damage being done to his body by the demonic venom, but that was all it did—and the more he practiced it, the more he realized what a monumental task it was to maintain it. The Breath of Fire was different from the other Breaths altogether—without moving, without dancing, without swinging his sword, the "Breath" of Fire, to him, was like a weight he had to carry, lest he drop it on his own feet.

He wondered if that was how his father had felt when, even with such a weak body, he had forced himself to dance in the snow for all the hours of the night leading to dawn…

Tanjiro imagined that if he were to fight using that Breath again, the toll that his body suffered during the battle against Muzan would come crashing down on him altogether.

The talisman that Yushiro had given him during the aftermath of the battle weighed on his arm, wrapped around it and damp; it clung to his wet skin like a brace, and left the grotesque lumps of flesh that scarred his gentle face visible for anyone awake to see. He must be hallucinating, as well, because otherwise, the creeping voices that festered in his eardrums daily would mean that the Progenitor was still alive…

His vision blurred, but with what he did not know. He doubted it was either sweat or tears, even though he felt feverish and wanted to cry for the first time in a long while. To any normal folk, everything that happened to him that led up from his family's sudden murders to him sitting on the floor of his old home in pain would be unlike anything that most other people would never have to experience. He felt strangely empty, despite returning to his house since forever, despite feeling the familiar wood under the soles of his feet. He thought that he could feel nostalgic once again, walking on it, but whatever hopes he had had for that were buried by the calluses under his feet.

It took him a few moments to realize that something was touching him. Even though the air around him homed in on crushing him under its oppressiveness, and though the numbness of his flesh grew stronger and threatened to erase his ability to feel, the touch of his little sister burned through the abyss he was falling in. Suddenly the house felt like his home once more. Suddenly the bed he laid on felt soft enough to sleep in, drenched as the sheets might have been. He sucked in a breath of air—the chill seeped into his organs and loosened them up.

He was no longer suffocating.

Without sparing her a glance, he closed his eyes, caressing her hair as she laid her small head in his lap, where he then sat in a cross-legged position, his back slightly hunched over. The girl was still asleep, judging from her breaths, yet despite that, she had instinctively reached her hand out to his, to keep him from shaking. Lightly, he squeezed down on her tiny fingers. Quietly, he reminisced when he held them when they first met…

_How you've grown, Nezuko…._

[]

The first sounds Serenity heard before she even woke were of wings fluttering. Following that came dream-generated boisterous laughter, which were succeeded by multiple stomps on the floor from another room. Being a thin wood floor, vibrations were carried across quite easily—perhaps more than she would care for, but alas, it was how it was.

She stirred, stretched, and rose, not making so much as a noise even as her blanket fell to the floor off her slight frame. Then standing, Serenity rose from her spot in the house, and, noting how Saburo's futon was empty and neatly folded beside hers, moved to rendezvous with the rest, whom appeared to her as making a small, welcome commotion near the entrance of the house.

It would seem that her short time living her new lifestyle with Saburo had made her more lax, being the last to awake out of all five in the house. She tucked away the shame she felt, as a hashashin in the past, and compartmentalized the shame she felt for how small her first shame was.

"My, what an unsightly view you are, Mongrel of Serenity! Should I send you to the baths first or straight back to your bed, where we can carry you out in, considering how serene your dreams must have been as indicated by the length of your sleep?"

…She was not ready for such rudeness so shortly after waking up….

The cold breeze of air that greeted her outside was refreshing on her skin, prickly from her slumber, although the relative thinness of her clothing protected her little from the colder aspect of it. The canopy over her head obscured her vision of the sky, but the clearing ahead of the house was lit well with sunshine, yet somehow subdued by a thick blanket of clouds above.

"Don't be too harsh on her, King Gilgamesh. I did not take you to have a jester's sensibilities, given how you had your own court to rule."

King Gilgamesh was standing near the edge of the _engawa_, dressed in a different kimono from the one he had worn the night before, but it was no less splendid, with its own brand of embroidery and strength of fabric. Master Saburo, on the other hand, was sitting against the outer wall of the house, resting his back while sitting in a cross-legged position, with a small smoke plate in front of him between his feet, dressed modestly in juxtaposition to the lavishly clothed king.

However, what truly caught the newly-awoken Serenity was neither of the two, nor was it the luxurious kimono that Gilgamesh wore—it was the bird perched on his arm, and the long scroll that he held in his other hand. Its length almost reached the wooden floorboard of the _engawa_ where he let it unfurl as he read its contents, and the bird's own appearance was of striking peculiarity, and intimidation.

It was a large thing, heavily resembling a crow, yet not quite seeming like one. The talons that it used to grip the king's arm were large and rough, but appeared disciplined enough to take care not to tear at his sleeve. The feathers on its wings and tail were flared, as though it could fly over an ocean without rest, and its beak sharper and longer than that of any eagle she had seen.

It turned its head toward her, and their eyes met. Its eyes, as sharp as its beak, held hers in place, and she caught a glint from it that somehow mesmerized something within her.

"Ah, it looks like _Kotaroemon Fujioka_ sees something in you. I wouldn't say that it likes you just yet, but it seems it has an interest in you, Mongrel. Consider yourself lucky…," King Gilgamesh remarked disinterestedly, trailing off into deep thought as he continued reading what Serenity would assume to be a report.

[]

_A berserk hero on the loose from the Greek envoys… A rogue, show-off samurai without a _NichirinBlade_ dispatching rampant demons and collecting ransoms from villages… Sightings of tiny creatures with unnatural bloodlust and malice unlike the demons we know… And the potential first encounter of a Storm in the province of __**Shimousa**__…._

King Gilgamesh pressed his lids together in contemplation, taking a deep breath of the fresh, morning air. With Serenity, the Storm Slayer Corps then had only two Storm Slayers wielding Blades of Calamity, and considering the new one's background, it was highly unlikely for her to have any experience wielding a large sword. She was an assassin from the Middle East, not a knight, nor a swordfighter of any kind.

The Corps had suffered extreme losses in the battle against Kibutsuji Muzan, even prior to encountering him directly and personally. The Pillars were heavily injured, some disfigured quite permanently, others retired, where the newer ones and the more seasoned, competent ones were mostly demoralized or were already entering a period of complacency. And then, the Global Storm Phenomenon cropped up, afflicting the entire world with a promise of absolute doom.

It was a call for Globalization, something that he himself was initially opposed to. He was the proud ruler of Uruk, more than content with his own subjects, but then…after all those years, adventures, conquests and challenges, he grew _bored_. There was nothing more to do in his own land. The systems of military personnel, agriculture, art, architecture, philosophy, music, and many more facets of human civilization within the areas of Mesopotamia that were under his jurisdiction had largely been regulated to the point where they had become automated efficiently. As a king, there had been little else for him to do.

And thus he was content with leaving it for the time being.

Then, they faced the legends of another country. In the Far East, there was a wielder of the sword unlike any other; someone who slew 100 samurai consecutively in the span of a single day without so much as a rest… They called her the holder of the Empyrean Eye that was said to claim a future that it appraised as its own before manifesting it as a reality. In the possession of someone with a sword, it was only intuitive to conclude that such a person would be able to defeat a hundred elite individuals with ease, alone.

And to think that she would manifest herself in the present as a Storm was something the king did not want to believe was true. With the entirety of the Storm Slayer Corps, he doubted that even he could lead them to victory…except…

"Tanjiro Kamado. There you are." The person in question emerged from the house as the king concluded his thoughts, and their next course of action. He looked fresh, as though he had a wondrous sleep the night prior. He prepared a smile for the small party of three outside; four, including the crow, but it wavered ever so slightly when his eyes landed on the creature.

"Why does…," before he could finish his question, the king responded.

"It appears as though the Globalized Storm Phenomenon, which affects the entire globe, has a particular effect on avians, be they migratory or not. In the case of the Kasugai Crows that you Demon Slayers have used, they've—and only loosely—_evolved_. I have been receiving reports across the seas from the Dutch East Indies via their own native messenger birds as well, who have themselves adapted to the new 'climate'." The generous explanation was not over, however; "As with most things related to the GSP, we do not know the reason why nor the methodology of its phenomenal progressions as of yet. Worry not, however. I am sure that _Matsuemon Tennōji _is resting just fine back at headquarters," he finished with a small smile.

"I have an announcement to make: We will be making our trek back to headquarters by noon. Mongrel of Serenity, you will begin training with one of the finest blade masters in all of Japan when we get there," he cocked his head to the side as he gave her a delighted, self-satisfied grin, "I hope you look forward to it.

"Now, please, make yourself presentable. You're being an eyesore to the rest of us here."

[]

In just a few moments, the previously crowded _engawa_ suddenly became a desolate place to be. King Gilgamesh made to do his preparations after sending the Kasugai Crow back with his own message, Serenity had gone to bathe herself for the day, and Tanjiro had retreated to his room. From under the short, wooden canopy, Saburo looked up at the sky, over the leafy canopies of the trees surrounding the house, and saw a colossal wall of thick clouds in the distance, in the far welkin. It looked like an atmospheric avalanche waiting to consume the sea of houses in the villages outside his vision, but it was slow; unmoving from where he sat.

He had put his _kiseru_ away; it would not do to smoke so much that early in the morning. To be honest, however, he was feeling slightly anxious. They were parting, were they not? The small family that they had formed the previous night, fleeting an illusion as it might have been, was going to scatter. With learning of Serenity's duty as a Storm Slayer, he faced being alone once again. Tanjiro's warm smile was no consolation. King Gilgamesh's companionship was ephemeral. Nezuko's playfulness felt distant.

He wanted to stay with Hassan. Not then, not after all they were together for….

Someone stepped outside to meet him; he felt the door opening behind him, and the weight of the foot placed against the floor that followed. "Tanjiro…," he greeted, without so much as looking back. His eyes remained glued to the distant clouds.

"Uncle Saburo, good morning," the boy greeted back in usual fashion. Saburo imagined he was wearing a warm smile on his face. "It is a wonderful day, today, isn't it? The sun hasn't felt this bright and warm in a long time."

"Indeed. Even under this canopy of yours, I can feel the extensions of its warmth…."

It had been forever since he last saw Tanjiro, before he suddenly reappeared in his life two nights ago. If Saburo confessed to himself, he would tell him that it all still felt like a dream he could not quite believe. It was not that it was too good to be true, to him, but rather, it felt…hard to believe. He had not felt as enriched in his life in so many years, deprived of daily human interaction, that it had become quite alien to him to even touch someone else. And then two people he had known since they were born suddenly returned to his life. At that point, he felt as though it was a temporary thing; before he knew it, they would likely be gone from his life again, and with Hassan, the light of his recent days, leaving his skies to return to the drab gray that he had long gotten sick of seeing, but powerless to change.

"Uncle Saburo, I'm glad to know that you were okay ever since I left." His thoughts paused as those words left Tanjiro's mouth. "When I returned home to this village, I was worried that everything might have changed. That…home would be too different for me to find an anchor in. Walking through the village, you know, felt a little overwhelming. Little Kojirō has grown so tall now, it's hard to believe he used to be about my waist when I left!

"And then, can you believe that Miss Sasaki can now walk again? The joy on her face when I saw her in the crowd is unlike anything I'd seen her express back in the day. Speaking of joy, I was so happy when I learned that Old Man Miyamoto has published his second book! I can't wait to read it to Nezuko when I get to buy a copy!"

Listening to the boy stilled his heart. If his chest contained raging waves of turmoil that he did not realize were crashing against his breast, then the bright boy's voice was like a bright sun that illuminated the ocean's gray waves, and calmed them. Tanjiro… He was completely unlike him. Ever since he first opened his eyes and met eyes with him, Saburo knew from the budding smile on his face that the child would grow to bring warmth to everyone he met. It had struck him with a deep envy when his parents asked for him to hold the boy in his arms during their first meeting with each other, and it was all he could do to keep the tears from falling right there and then.

"After all these years," a small smile crept into his old face, unknown to him. "I can easily imagine that you are still so close to your little sister, Tanjiro. I'm glad to know that. I would find it difficult, after all, for such a kind boy like you to get into an argument with her."

"Hahaha!" His laugh rang in his ears in a pleasant manner. It was light, but carried with it a weight that did not bore down on one, but rather imbued them with a lifted spirit. "Honestly, sometimes it feels like I'm still babying her. But, if I have to carry my little sister like a child for the rest of my life, if it meant staying by her side, I would do it beyond my grave."

"That is a typical thing for you to say," Saburo replied, smiling and shaking his head, but not in disapproval. Tanjiro only laughed a bit in response. "It must have been hard for you, fighting demons like that, learning how to fight so young." His voice took on a more somber tone as he continued—he swayed his arms outward a bit to keep them from numbing—"But Tanjiro, I'm glad you made it alive, with your sister as well. If your family was still here, I can only imagine how proud they would be of you. I know I am."

There was a short, pensive silence, before his voice returned. He could hear, despite how subdued it was, the sincerity in his words, "…Yeah… Thank you, Uncle Saburo.

"I…have something to tell you."

"What is it?" Saburo turned his head around to face the boy.

Tanjiro looked glum when he first turned around, but gathered a certain courage within himself as their eyes met. He reached for his forehead, and from nowhere—pulled off a talisman, and his face suddenly became distorted with a vile, grotesque scar covering his entire right eye. Saburo was taken aback—and ashamedly, quite visibly. "Tanjiro, what happened?" he squeezed out, nearly speechless.

"At first, when I learned it can't heal, I was afraid. I was quite scared I wouldn't be accepted back into the village I once knew." He touched three fingers to it, and Saburo noticed the slight tremble in his hand before it steadied and rose to his face. "And I was sad, too, when I learn that I won't be able to see through my other eye for as long as I can see. But, when I remember that my comrades have lost far more than me, I realize that I am quite fortunate, still.

"Then I remember all the time in my life that I have been happy. The time in my adventures with my friends, when I fought demons to protect people who we saved—those days, selfish-sounding as this may be, were days I will come to cherish. Uncle Saburo, I want to thank you."

"For what?"

"If you feel left out, Uncle Saburo, remember that if it weren't for you, I would have died that night when my family was attacked. Nezuko would've been slain by a Demon Slayer who found her. Muzan would still be roaming Nippon, and many more people would have died." Tanjiro then did something that he was not expecting, even through the manners that the boy possessed—he bowed down, laying his head against the floor, facing the old man. "Thank you for saving my and Nezuko's life. Your hospitality—it saved us both."

Saburo thought, maybe for a whole minute, and the whole time the boy did not rise from his position. Perhaps the entire minute was spent in shock rather than in thought for him, but somehow, he found the strength to accept the young boy's gratitude. "Thank you, too, Tanjiro. My heart finds peace knowing you believe in that."

"But it is true!" Tanjiro rose, after receiving a response from him. "I know how violent demons can be, and how ruthless they are. If I had gone back home that night, then I wouldn't be here today. I would have suffered a lot of pain before dying, and I would have had to see my family killed in front of me. I don't want to imagine that, so please accept my gratitude!"

Saburo sighed concedingly, but not insensitively. "…Alright. You are welcome, Tanjiro," he said, and smiled, this time knowing that he had done so. "You are welcome. To my house, as is Nezuko. Any time you want to visit. And I can cook for you again, like that night."

[]

"Are you coming, or not, Mister Saburo?" King Gilgamesh demanded. Surprisingly enough, he was the first one ready to depart. It must have been because Saburo had assumed that he would have a lot of belongings to pack together, but looking back, he never did see him with excessive luxury items on him. The man was dressed in a modern-looking coat; non-traditional as it was, it appeared practical enough for a long trek in the shallow snow and frigid air.

Saburo never considered that as an option on its own. He had believed that by noon, they were going to leave behind the Kamado Estate to move toward the Storm Slayer Corps' headquarters. Wherever that might be, he assumed it was not to be disclosed to him as he was in no way an authority involved with them, but…

"Speechless, huh?" the king noted as he raised his eyebrows at him. " I can't say I expected someone of your age to be so eloquent all the time. But I have told my officers there to prepare a quarters for you to stay in for the time being, or longer if you want, until the Kakushi could get your home fixed. It's only natural for us to cover the expenses of collateral, but your staying quarters will be accounted for as payment for looking after one of the Storm Slayers for us." The amused light returned to his eyes as he watched the gears turn behind Saburo's eyes.

"If you were planning to stay behind in this place, or in an inn in town, or even in your own, dilapidated abode, you don't have to take my word for how demons have been known to attack someone living alone. It happens all the time—you can even ask our resident Demon Slayer if you like." His mirth manifested as a smirk, then, "It wouldn't surprise me if a demon on the run stumbled upon you for its last meal before it's caught up to my the Demon Slayers."

"I suppose that I do not have much choice in the matter, do I? Well, even if it were so, I wouldn't have had it any other way," he partially lied, rising to his feet and popping a few joints along the way.

A stray whip of wind lashed into his clothes, fluttering his sleeves in the breeze over his thin frame. The Demon Slayer Corps… Never in his life did he imagine he would be able to see it with his own eyes.


End file.
